Why do people like to use their car rather than use alternative means of transport?
The answer is that the people of the UK have 'a love affair with the car'. The sad truth of the matter is that peoples' lives have changed and adapted to the car and its associated feeling of mobility and personal freedom. The massive growth in car ownership (there are now nearly 25 million cars on the roads) over the last 20 years or so has led to huge problems relating to congestion and pollution in many areas.
An Ideology of BeliefThe car culture [gloss.] is an ideology of automobility, where the set of beliefs that one has are almost as strong as religious beliefs, but here relate to the car. The car is seen as material embodiment of this ideology, and the following components are important: power, control, individualism, competition, freedom, mobility, escape.
Article introducing the American car culture
One could argue that with today's traffic problem, one cannot escape, or be mobile. A way of changing the culture is to challenge it, by a series of measures linked to the theory of behavioural change (outside the scope of this module):
Consider what you watched in the 'Carmageddon' video. The mother taking her children to school on a 3-mile journey that takes 1 hour, and the commuter travelling to London every day by car, all say that the alternatives are unsatisfactory. They say that the government is forcing them out of their cars by increasing fuel duty and parking charges, but they do not improve the public transport in the area. 160,000 new drivers enter the UK's roads each year and image and style means everything to the younger generation: the environment is not seen as important as how fast your car can go. The facts of the matter are simple, the UK is a nation of car lovers, and possibly the only way to tempt drivers onto buses and trains is by providing a public transport alternative that offers the same convenience, mobility, cleanliness and cost as a private car.
Question...?Will the UK government ever succeed in this ambitious plan?
The UK is a nation of car lovers
The government proposes that building extra road capacity is no good at solving the problem; they may be right, maybe not. However it is sensible to consider alternative means to the car for the population's transportation needs, as even the most hardened pro-roads campaigner will agree that cars contribute to pollution!
The next three sections under this topic describe various measures to change travel behaviour in more detail, and provide links to further information. We can also now split the list at the top of this page into 'carrots' and 'sticks' [gloss.] which each aim to have a positive (carrots) or negative (sticks) impact on the motorist psychologically.
 topic overview |
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introduction |
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the 'car culture' - a brief synopsis |
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carrots |
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sticks |
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road-user charging |
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organisation travel plans |
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exam-style questions |
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Transport Issues
last modified: 17-Jan-2006
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