Everyday mobility in municipalities between the Lower Rhine and Ruhr areas. Why is public transport not used more frequently?

Abstract

Everyday mobility in Germany is strongly related to the use of cars. However, sustainability debates since the 1980s have criticized the dominance of the car, with its internal combustion engine, as a means of transportation. Therefore, scientists are increasingly demanding a transition both to cars with climate-neutral engines and to a modal shift to public transportation, cycling, and walking. This study focuses on the reasons why the surveyed households are against the use of local public transport, which is a central element of this transformation. A questionnaire was used to investigate the everyday mobility of more than 1000 citizens from four municipalities in the western Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area at the interface to the Lower Rhine region. The analyses show that time-based and infrastructural arguments are the most common but that there are differences between the study municipalities and the surveyed households. In order to achieve a modal shift from car to other means of transportation, as is demanded by experts, there is the need to improve time efficiency, reliability, flexibility, and the price-performance-ratio of public transportation.