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Rethinking habitual travel patterns – what might ‘flexi-mobility’ mean for sustainable transport policies?

Panel: 4. Mobility, transport, and smart and sustainable cities

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Jillian Anable, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Tim Chatterton, University of the West of England, United Kingdom
Noel Cass, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Iain Docherty, Adam Smith Management
School, University of Glasgow, United Kingdom
Karolina Doughty, School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton, United Kingdom
James Faulconbridge, Lancaster University Management
School, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
Greg Marsden, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Helen Roby, The Open University Business School

Abstract

Personal travel is responsible for a significant proportion of both global carbon emissions and energy use but is often held to be particularly difficult to reduce through changing behaviour rather than through technological adaptation. This is because most travel is considered to be a ‘habitual’ behaviour which is relatively fixed and possesses a great deal of inertia. The “Unlocking Low Carbon Travel” project has spent 3-years undertaking an extensive programme of work looking at people’s everyday lives and the role that travel plays in these. The research included: following over 30 families in longitudinal socio-ethnographic studies; carrying out a major national quantitative survey; studying a range of short-term disruptions to travel such as flooding, winter weather and fuel shortages; and interviews and workshops with policy stakeholders and citizens.

Our work has identified that there is a much greater degree of variability, and therefore flexibility, in how people travel than is often held. However, people often become locked into complex travel arrangements due to the demands put on them through the expectations of everyday life. This variability is masked by standard approaches to collecting data on travel, such as the UK National Travel Survey which asks questions such as “How do you usually travel to work?” or even “When you cycled in the last 12 months, where did you usually cycle?” This line of questioning not only reflects common assumptions about lack of flexibility in people’s travel, but also goes on to reinforce these views by generalised reporting of these that doesn’t account for the other ways and means of travel that people might use.

Having uncovered this greater potential for what we term ‘flexi-mobility’, we explore whether it is a resource that could be cultivated and developed in order to help unlock new possibilities for transitions to more sustainable patterns of travel and mobility. The concept opens up possibilities for sustainable transport policies, accepting the need for better coordination from a range of actors, rather than the current trend towards individualisation of responsibility for travel and its impacts.

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