REDUCING CAR USE FOR SHORT TRIPS {PRIVATE}

In most countries of the world, car use is increasing, leading to a range of problems. In Great Britain, a quarter of all car trips are less than 3.2 km (2 miles) long and more than half are less than 8 km (5 miles). There is scope to transfer many of these trips to the less harmful alternatives. This paper presents some of the findings from a project entitled Potential for mode transfer of short trips, which was designed to address these issues. The project has been carried out for the UK Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) by the Center for Transport Studies at University College London (UCL) with the survey work sub-contracted to Steer Davies Gleave (SDG). The overall objective of the work was to contribute to Government policy in encouraging the use of the environmentally-benign travel modes in order to reduce the amount of travel by private car. The focus was on the encouragement of the use of walking, cycling and public transport (buses in particular). The focus of this work is `short trips'. In this work these are taken to be those of less than 8 kilometers (5 miles). It should also be noted that this work concentrates on the alternatives to the car that car users perceive and what would make them choose them, rather than on the policies that might make them give up their cars, for example, road pricing. It should be recognized that the actions identified in these surveys are unlikely, on their own, to reduce car use significantly, and that policies that increase the cost of using the car or restrict its use in some other way, would be necessary. The work in this paper will concentrate on car drivers, but car passengers were considered explicitly in the study. In the next section the methodology adopted in the study is described. The analysis begins with consideration of the reasons drivers give for using their cars for short trips. This is followed by discussion of what people say would make them reduce their car use, the alternatives they say that they would consider and the instruments that would encourage them to switch to the alternatives.