IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0071790.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Walking, Cycling and Driving to Work in the English and Welsh 2011 Census: Trends, Socio-Economic Patterning and Relevance to Travel Behaviour in General

Author

Listed:
  • Anna Goodman

Abstract

Objectives: Increasing walking and cycling, and reducing motorised transport, are health and environmental priorities. This paper examines levels and trends in the use of different commute modes in England and Wales, both overall and with respect to small-area deprivation. It also investigates whether commute modal share can serve as a proxy for travel behaviour more generally. Methods: 23.7 million adult commuters reported their usual main mode of travelling to work in the 2011 census in England and Wales; similar data were available for 1971–2001. Indices of Multiple Deprivation were used to characterise socio-economic patterning. The National Travel Survey (2002–2010) was used to examine correlations between commute modal share and modal share of total travel time. These correlations were calculated across 150 non-overlapping populations defined by region, year band and income. Results: Among commuters in 2011, 67.1% used private motorised transport as their usual main commute mode (−1.8 percentage-point change since 2001); 17.8% used public transport (+1.8% change); 10.9% walked (−0.1% change); and 3.1% cycled (+0.1% change). Walking and, to a marginal extent, cycling were more common among those from deprived areas, but these gradients had flattened over the previous decade to the point of having essentially disappeared for cycling. In the National Travel Survey, commute modal share and total modal share were reasonably highly correlated for private motorised transport (r = 0.94), public transport (r = 0.96), walking (r = 0.88 excluding London) and cycling (r = 0.77). Conclusions: England and Wales remain car-dependent, but the trends are slightly more encouraging. Unlike many health behaviours, it is more common for socio-economically disadvantaged groups to commute using physically active modes. This association is, however, weakening and may soon reverse for cycling. At a population level, commute modal share provides a reasonable proxy for broader travel patterns, enhancing the value of the census in characterising background trends and evaluating interventions.

Suggested Citation

  • Anna Goodman, 2013. "Walking, Cycling and Driving to Work in the English and Welsh 2011 Census: Trends, Socio-Economic Patterning and Relevance to Travel Behaviour in General," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-11, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0071790
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0071790
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0071790
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0071790&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0071790?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adam Millard‐Ball & Lee Schipper, 2011. "Are We Reaching Peak Travel? Trends in Passenger Transport in Eight Industrialized Countries," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(3), pages 357-378.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lovejoy, Kristin, 2012. "Mobility Fulfillment Among Low-car Households: Implications for Reducing Auto Dependence in the United States," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt4v44b5qn, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    2. Ding, Chuan & Wang, Donggen & Liu, Chao & Zhang, Yi & Yang, Jiawen, 2017. "Exploring the influence of built environment on travel mode choice considering the mediating effects of car ownership and travel distance," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 65-80.
    3. Phil Goodwin & Kurt Van Dender, 2013. "'Peak Car' - Themes and Issues," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(3), pages 243-254, May.
    4. Bastian, Anne & Börjesson, Maria, 2014. "It's the economy, stupid: increasing fuel price is enough to explain Peak Car in Sweden," Working papers in Transport Economics 2014:15, CTS - Centre for Transport Studies Stockholm (KTH and VTI).
    5. Klein, Nicholas J. & Smart, Michael J., 2017. "Millennials and car ownership: Less money, fewer cars," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 20-29.
    6. Michael Iacono & David Levinson, 2015. "Cohort Effects and Their Influence on Car Ownership," Working Papers 000138, University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group.
    7. Geels, Frank W., 2012. "A socio-technical analysis of low-carbon transitions: introducing the multi-level perspective into transport studies," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 471-482.
    8. Stefan Arens & Sunke Schlüters & Benedikt Hanke & Karsten von Maydell & Carsten Agert, 2020. "Sustainable Residential Energy Supply: A Literature Review-Based Morphological Analysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-28, January.
    9. Sonja E. Forward, 2019. "Views on Public Transport and How Personal Experiences Can Contribute to a More Positive Attitude and Behavioural Change," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(2), pages 1-23, February.
    10. Bastian, Anne & Börjesson, Maria & Eliasson, Jonas, 2016. "Explaining “peak car” with economic variables," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 236-250.
    11. Holz-Rau, Christian & Scheiner, Joachim, 2020. "Raum und Verkehr - ein Feld komplexer Wirkungsbeziehungen: Können Interventionen in die gebaute Umwelt klimawirksame Verkehrsemissionen wirklich senken?," Forschungsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Reutter, Ulrike & Holz-Rau, Christian & Albrecht, Janna & Hülz, Martina (ed.), Wechselwirkungen von Mobilität und Raumentwicklung im Kontext gesellschaftlichen Wandels, volume 14, pages 76-101, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    12. Zia Wadud & Muhammad Adeel & Jillian Anable, 2024. "Understanding the large role of long-distance travel in carbon emissions from passenger travel," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 9(9), pages 1129-1138, September.
    13. Mounce, Richard & Nelson, John D., 2019. "On the potential for one-way electric vehicle car-sharing in future mobility systems," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 17-30.
    14. Picasso, Emilio & Postorino, Maria Nadia & Bonoli-Escobar, Mariano & Stewart-Harris, Maria, 2020. "Car-sharing vs bike-sharing: A choice experiment to understand young people behaviour," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 121-128.
    15. Nielsen, Thomas Alexander Sick, 2015. "Changes in transport behavior during the financial crisis. An analysis of urban form, location and transport behavior in the greater Copenhagen area 2006–2011," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 10-19.
    16. Ababio-Donkor, Augustus & Saleh, Wafaa & Fonzone, Achille, 2020. "The role of personal norms in the choice of mode for commuting," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    17. Kamga, Camille, 2015. "Emerging travel trends, high-speed rail, and the public reinvention of U.S. transportation," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 111-120.
    18. Lindsey, Robin, 2012. "Road pricing and investment," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 49-63.
    19. Nicholas J. Klein & Michael J. Smart, 2017. "Car today, gone tomorrow: The ephemeral car in low-income, immigrant and minority families," Transportation, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 495-510, May.
    20. Kay, Andrew I. & Noland, Robert B. & Rodier, Caroline J., 2014. "Achieving reductions in greenhouse gases in the US road transportation sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 536-545.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0071790. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.