six - What do people think about everyday travel in urban areas?

Summary

Introduction

Having examined the ways in which aspects of the built environment and land use influence everyday travel, especially the propensity to walk or cycle, we now explore in more detail the views that people have about walking and cycling for short trips in urban areas. The chapter draws, first, on the questionnaire data collected in a large sample survey from the case study towns and, second, from statistical analysis of the mass of qualitative evidence collected through interviews, go-alongs and ethnographic study. Details of how these data were collected, and some of their limitations, were given in Chapter Four and are not repeated here. Responses to both questionnaires and interviews about how people travel, and how they would like to travel, must be interpreted with caution. Some respondents may feel constrained to give answers that they feel are expected, or which show them in a good light, while others may simply feel that a question is irrelevant to them. However, responses gained from both the questionnaire and interview data collected in the UWAC project are broadly in line with other similar research data (for instance Mackett, 2003) and with results from the National Travel Survey (DfT, 2011a) thus increasing confidence in their credibility. In this short chapter the views of residents in our four case study towns are summarised to provide context for the detailed appraisal of experiences of walking and cycling provided in Chapters Seven and Eight.

What do people say about how they travel?

The questionnaires asked a wide range of questions about how people travel, the reasons why they do certain things, and their aspirations and thoughts for the future. Our survey shows that walking is an important mode of transport in all four case study communities. Because results are broadly similar in all locations studied data are presented only at an aggregate level for the whole sample. Of the respondents, 38% made journeys on foot on a daily basis and almost 90% at least once a week, though, what is important is that respondents reported an overall decline in their walking compared to the (unspecified) past (46% reported previously making daily journeys on foot and more than 90% at least once a week).