Why do people use their cars for short trips?

Abstract

The number of short trips by car is increasing. The objective of this paper is to look at why people use their cars for such trips. The paper draws upon the results of surveys carried out as part of a project for the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) to investigate the potential for switching short car trips to other modes in Great Britain. The paper commences by considering the various approaches used to look at why people travel by car and, from these, concludes that there is a need to examine the behaviour underlying specific real trips by car. This is followed by a description of the survey methodology used in the project which forms the core of this paper. Then the evidence on why people used their cars for a set of real short trips identified in the surveys is presented. This is considered in terms of a number of dimensions including age, sex, and trip purpose. This is followed by a discussion of the alternatives to the car that drivers say that they might adopt and the factors which they say would make them consider switching to these alternatives.