ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter we described the changes in mobility arising from economic growth in general and from investment in transport infrastructure and private car ownership in particular. Because of the scale and pervasiveness of these changes it is easy to overlook the significance of other factors which affect travel. In this chapter we look at changes in these other factors – in the characteristics of the population, in the spatial patterning of land use and in the mix of human activities and their patterning in time. We explain and report on each of these before finally examining their overall outcome as reflected in trends in personal travel,
We begin by considering changes in overall population numbers and their spatial distribution (2.2). We then look at the socio-economic characteristics of the population in terms of age structure (2.3), household composition (2.4) and economic activity (2.5). (In practice these are inter-related.)
People’s choices of activity outside their home are conditioned by the pattern of land use development and its relationship to the networks of different transport modes. The pattern which has evolved over the last fifty years is the product of social and economic forces on the one hand and public policy in the field of town planning on the other. We identify the main trends and their transport implications in section 2.6.
