Why we don’t have to completely do without our cars

Feeling of freedom makes driving popular

Meike Jipp is a psychologist who heads the Institute of Transport Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Berlin. According to Jipp, the feeling of freedom is the main reason people don’t want to do without their cars. Your car waits just outside your door, and you can go almost anywhere with it. The opposite is true for public transport; people wait at bus or streetcar stops and depend on the timetable. On top of that, buses and trains don’t travel right to our destination, they only stop somewhere near where we really want to go. “So it’s no surprise that trips with public transportation take longer and are perceived as less convenient,” says Jipp. A study shows that it takes about three times as long to get to work with public transport as it does with a car. The difference is even greater in rural areas.

Changing mobility habits instead of doing without

But would we really have to do without our cars in order to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets?

Claudia Nobis says no. Nobis is a social scientist at DLR who heads a project funded by the German Environment Agency; the project’s aim is the development of a sufficiency strategy for the transport sector and its successful communication. “What’s important is for as many people as possible to walk or use public transport or bicycles to meet their daily mobility needs and to use cars only for a few specific routes,” she says.

For many people, however, this would mean a complete change in their mobility habits. “Before the COVID-19 pandemic, about half of the adult population belonged to the group of monomodal car users; those are people who, given the choice of using a car, a bicycle or public transport during a normal week, use only the car. During the pandemic, that component grew by about 10 percentage points to 60 percent,” says Nobis. Multimodal users, who are already using a mix of transportation types in everyday life, have developed routines that involve the use of other means of transport and can do without cars for some routes more easily

The Allgemeine Deutsche Fahrrad-Club (ADFC), a German cycling association, has been demanding that for years.  Angela Kohls, Policy Director at the ADFC, says “To get as many people as possible to switch to climate- and environment-friendly transport, that transport has to be seen as a safe, pleasant and convenient alternative to the private car. The more attractive the alternatives to cars are, the easier it is for individuals to decide to leave their cars at home.” And what makes the alternatives to cars attractive?

One-third of the CO₂ emitted by cars comes from trips shorter than 20 kilometers. Almost 90 percent of our daily trips are in this range. Over half of them cover less than 5 km and about 75 percent cover less than 10 km, often within a single city. Cycling has enormous conversion potential for such routes.

Boosting public transportation

Elisabeth Schwenzow, head of the traffic department in the District of Borken, a largely rural region with 17 communities and small or medium-sized cities in the Westmünsterland region, deals with public transportation a lot and knows what would make it more attractive. “Good public transport is available at most times of the day and makes it possible for passengers to reach even relatively distant destinations easily. Reliability is essential, especially for commuters” she says. While transportation is readily available in most major cities, there is still room for improvement in rural areas, especially for connections between road and rail, according to Schwenzow. “Cars, buses, and trains should be synchronized so that people can switch from one to another without long waits. That makes public transportation much more attractive. And the last mile to the destination or the stop is important. It has to be safe, well lit, and attractive,” she says.