Kiron Chatterjee

A Human Perspective on the Daily Commute: Costs, Benefits and Trade‐offs

Abstract The average worker in Britain spends 139 h/year commuting—the equivalent of 19 standard working days. While the average distance and time taken for journeys to work has been steadily increasing, the average number of journeys has been decreasing at a similar rate. The aggregate picture inevitably masks an array of underlying trends. This paper offers a multi‐perspective examination of commuting drawing upon the literature in transport, planning, geography, economics, psychology, sociology and medicine. It examines statistical evidence on trends in commuting travel behaviour and finds that one in 25 commuters now travels to work in excess of 100 km (both ways) and one in ten commuters now spends over 2 h/day travelling to and from work. It explores the different impacts (economic, health and social) that commuting has on the individuals who conduct it and seeks to understand better the role of commuting for individuals in today’s society. The paper finishes its examination by reviewing the commute experience itself, including attitudes towards it and the use of time during the journey. It concludes by highlighting a dilemma facing transport planning and policy. There are social, economic and financial benefits from an improved travel experience for people with long commute journeys, yet improving the travel experience may itself contribute to the trend towards long‐distance commuting.

Life Events and Travel Behavior

Recent research has indicated that changes in travel behavior are more likely at the time of major life events. However, much remains to be learned about the extent to which different life events trigger behavioral change and the conditions under which life events are more likely to trigger change. The UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) offers a previously unavailable opportunity to investigate this topic for a large, representative sample of the UK population. UKHLS data were also linked to local spatial data drawn from the census and other sources to elucidate the effect of the spatial context on changes to travel behavior in association with life events. Findings from an exploratory analysis of data from UKHLS Waves 1 and 2 are presented first. Transition tables demonstrate a strong association between changes in car ownership and commute mode and the following life events: employment changes, residential relocation, retirement, the birth of children, and changes in household structure. The results of logit models that relate the probability of an increase and a decrease in the number of cars owned to the occurrence of life events and that control for individual and household characteristics and spatial context are then shown. These models show, for example, that moves to urban and rural areas have contrasting effects on travel behavior and that having a new child in itself is not a significant influence on car ownership in the short term.

Conceptual Model to Explain Turning Points in Travel Behavior: Application to Bicycle Use

Existing knowledge on cycling behavior, as with travel behavior in general, is based mainly on cross-sectional studies. It is questionable how much can be learned about the reasons for behavioral change from such studies. A major investment program to promote cycling in 12 English cities and towns between 2008 and 2011 provided the opportunity to study the bicycle use of residents and how that use was affected by the investment. Face-to-face interviews collected biographical information on travel behavior and life-change events during the investment period for 144 research participants and probed the reasons for changes in bicycle use. Theory (from the life course perspective) and preliminary analysis of the interview data were used to develop a conceptual model that hypothesized that turning points in travel behavior were triggered by contextual change (a life-change event or change in the external environment) and mediated by intrinsic motivations, facilitating conditions, and personal history. The model provided an effective means of explaining turning points in bicycle use. The analysis of the interview data showed how the nature of behavioral influences (in particular, life-change events and intrinsic motivations) varied over the life course. The research highlights the advantages of viewing travel behavior change in the context of peoples evolving lives and how that approach can help in developing transport policies and practices.

On the potential for recognising of social interaction and social learning in modelling travellers' change of behaviour under uncertainty

This study aims to investigate the potential of incorporating social interaction and social learning in modelling travellers’ change of behaviour under uncertainty. The interdependent situation between travellers in using the road as a public good is considered a source of uncertainty to be studied. The role of social information in reducing the level of uncertainty is investigated. The research methodology utilises laboratory and simulation experiments. A social interdependence situation which is formulated as a hypothetical employer-based demand management initiative in reducing car use is used as the case study. A laboratory experiment demonstrates the dynamic processes of travel behaviour in making repeated travel decisions. Analyses on group and individual behaviours of travellers provide some indications about the existence of some types of social and individual learning mechanisms in their decision-making. The results of the laboratory experiment also provide basic information for developing a simulation model in the next stage of the study. The simulation experiment utilises an agent-based simulation model to simulate and analyse behaviours of individuals in larger environments, larger group sizes, longer time periods and various situational settings. The simulation experiments provide indications, which are supported by the evidence obtained from the laboratory experiment, that social information may have both positive and negative effects on individuals’ behaviour, depending on the form of social learning mechanisms that are used by travellers. Providing social information does not necessarily reduce the uncertainty level; however, it is shown to do so when social learning strongly exists among travellers.

Qualitative Insights into the Effect on Travel Behavior of Joining a Carshare

Carsharing organizations (carshares) provide collectively available vehicles that can be booked for exclusive use on a pay-as-you-go basis. Previous research has shown that two groups join carshares: (a) accessors, who do not have a car when they join the carshare and therefore gain access to one, and (b) shedders, who give up a car when they join the carshare. The paper examines the circumstances and motivations that cause accessors and shedders to join a carshare, the changes in their travel behavior in the short and longer run, and how the travel behavior might have changed if the carshare had not been joined. These objectives were achieved through in-depth interviews with 16 members of a carshare in Bath, United Kingdom. The interviewed members were selected to achieve a mix of accessors, shedders, recent members, and longstanding members. It was found that carshare attracted people who were already contemplating giving up their cars or who had been triggered by life events to consider giving up their cars. Joining a car-share prevented the acquisition of cars for some members, but some subsequently took opportunities to acquire a car as their circumstances changed. Once shedders became members, they adapted to managing without a personal car, used a variety of transport modes, planned their activity–travel schedules in advance, and took into account the costs and convenience of different options. The increasing popularity of new mobility options, such as carsharing, also has implications for the methods used to analyze and model travel behavior. The option of joining a carshare and using carshare vehicles should be included in transport models for areas in which carshares operate.

Modeling the timing of user responses to a new urban public transport service: Application of duration modeling

When a new service is introduced into the transport market (or an existing service is modified), the timing and nature of the responses of individuals can be expected to vary considerably. The aggregated responses of individuals will determine overall usage of the service. This paper reports how a panel survey was used to obtain information on the timing and nature of responses to a new public transport service. The survey results indicate how awareness, perceptions, and usage of the service change over time. Duration modeling was applied to analyze the factors that influenced the time taken to use the new service. It indicates that being younger, being from a household without a car, gaining a bus service that is physically closer to the home than services previously available, and using buses frequently before the new service was introduced all reduce the time taken to use the new service. The duration modeling provides useful results for operators to consider in marketing new transport services. For forecasting the overall usage of a new service, predicting new users and their frequency of usage need to be considered. It is anticipated that this type of analysis will lead to better understanding of the impacts of transport policy interventions and to improved transport forecasting tools.

Understanding Change and Continuity in Walking and Cycling Over the Life Course: A First Look at Gender and Cohort Differences

Research of walking and cycling is dominated by approaches oriented to explanations of behavioural outcomes as a function of contemporaneous circumstances. The lack of a long term temporal perspective precludes understanding of behaviour as an outcome of past behaviour and experiences, and impedes our ability to support walking and cycling as life-long practices. This chapter presents a study that was conducted at the nexus of health and travel behaviour research to gain a life course perspective of walking and cycling. Individual’s retrospective reasoning of change and continuity in their behaviour through life events and transitions was captured using biographical interviews. Biographies of older and younger adults indicated that behaviour developments were associated with changes in location, mobility resources, roles and health status and highlighted that the potential for adaptive, restorative and diminishing changes extended into later life. Some distinctions were apparent between the gender and cohort groups in the timing and occurrence of behaviour change and continuity. For instance some older women appeared to be better positioned by earlier life experiences to resume active travel in later life. Biographical insights suggest interventions be tailored by consideration of target group’s ability and readiness to make restorative change.

Towards a theory of the dynamics of household car ownership: Insights from a mobility biographies approach

Household car ownership has arguably been one of the most widely studied areas within the field of transport research. Recently, studies in this area have moved to a focus on understanding the dynamic (time varying) nature of household car ownership. The chapter advances the contention that there is often a missing link between the reporting of empirical findings relating to the dynamics of household car ownership, and a critical articulation of theory that both underpins and is developed through the empirical research. The chapter explores how the ‘Mobility Biographies’ approach offers a new opportunity to revisit the relationship between theory and empirical approaches to examining household car ownership and how it changes over the life course. It presents a dynamic conceptual framework that was generated from qualitative accounts of car ownership histories and empirical results from a large-scale panel data set that confirm the strong association between life events and car ownership changes. It concludes with an assessment of the differing longitudinal analytical approaches (both qualitative and quantitative) that may be effectively combined in furthering understanding and developing theory.

Family formation and everyday travel in Britain since c.1850

Abstract This paper focuses on the extent to which everyday travel behaviour in Britain changes in relation to family responsibilities, and examines how this has altered over the past century and a half. It is argued that prior to the mid-twentieth century changes in the family such as increased child-care responsibilities barely influenced the modes of transport used for everyday travel, but that increasingly in the later twentieth century people adjusted their travel behaviour during the family formation phases of the life cycle. In particular, parents of young children have become more car-dependent and less likely to walk or cycle. Data are drawn from two separate projects, one that collected travel life histories from the past half-century as context for research on cycling in later life, and one that uses personal diaries to reveal everyday mobility strategies of people in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is argued that the observed changes are due not only to increased access to a wide range of different transport forms, especially the motor car, but also to changes in societal perceptions of risk and norms of travel behaviour. In conclusion, it is suggested that more awareness of past travel behaviours could aid the development and implementation of more sustainable transport policies in the UK.

Cycling beyond your sixties: The role of cycling in later life and how it can be supported and promoted

Abstract Decision makers and authorities largely ignore cycling when conceptualising and developing programmes to support older mobility and therefore, unsurprisingly, levels of cycling in the United Kingdom are low compared to other northern European nations. Cycling has the potential to play an important role in the active ageing agenda and provide older citizens with a form of independent mobility that enhances personal health and wellbeing. The chapter provides evidence of the important role cycling does and could play in older people’s mobility and outlines ways in which older cycling could be supported and promoted.