Built Environment or Household Life-Cycle Stages–-Which Explains Sustainable Travel More?

Abstract

Sustainable travel is a goal deserving of research and implementation, but how such a goal can be reached is debated. Fueling this debate are the many different factors involved in individual travel, ranging from values and beliefs to the impact of the built environment. The amount of impact that the built environment may have can be clouded by a person's personal preference for a certain lifestyle, and different life-cycle stages have different levels of travel. Although low levels of automobile use have been observed in city centers, the question remains whether the demographics of the distinct developed areas can explain the differences. This paper investigated the fraction of automobile trips across different developed areas for households of distinct life-cycle stages to determine which explained the differences best. The results suggest that it is the built environment that has a greater ability to explain the differences in the fraction of automobile trips and that households of the same life-cycle stage retain the same basic number of trips.