How do citizens experience their mobility in everyday life?
Trying something new can take a lot of overcoming, for example when you cycle to work for the first time: You may have misjudged the time required, not yet found the optimal route or forgotten your spare T-shirt. Routines such as grabbing your car or bike keys in the morning or the usual walk to the city train are deeply ingrained in everyday life. At the same time, they are linked to local conditions such as transport infrastructure. With AMBER, we are investigating how people experience their everyday journeys – while moving around as usual or trying to develop new mobility habits.
“Routines and habits are important because they give us stability and allow us to do things without thinking about them. To build up new, healthy mobility habits, you first have to invest some energy and effort. But once you've done it, you can be proud and are less likely to fall back into old patterns of behavior.”
Dr. Jan Keller,
Behavioral and health psychologist at the FU Berlin
Active mobility: from good intentions to implementation
Many people have already made plans to leave their cars at home more often [1]. Because of the benefits for health and climate protection, they want to make their mobility more active – for example, by walking, cycling or using public transport. But why is it often so difficult to put this intention into action – and what could help with that?
Both old habits and external circumstances make it difficult to be active on all everyday journeys. This is evident when shopping, for example: In cities, grocery stores are often close by, but in many cases people use their cars for shopping. In order for more people to feel safer and consider shopping by bike, a suitable cycle path to the supermarket is needed. In addition, bulk purchases for the family or shared flat are more difficult to transport, which is an obstacle to using a bike. Various European cities therefore already offer subsidies for cargo bikes [2].
Active mobility with public transport
Using public transport is also associated with different experiences in everyday life. On the one hand, full trains and the stress of changing trains can make it difficult to take public transport for everyday journeys. On the other hand, you can use the journey time to read, listen to music or talk. Furthermore, study results show that people are physically active for an average of 8 to 33 additional minutes per day when using public transport [3].
Health problems or restrictions must also play a role in the transport infrastructure and the promotion of active mobility. Offers such as the barrier-free BVG Muva call bus in Berlin are promising in this respect: it offers an “elevator replacement” service that takes you to the nearest barrier-free station if an elevator is out of order.
How do people experience their everyday routes?
In two citizen science studies in Berlin and Frankfurt (Oder), we want to work with citizens to learn more about how mobility decisions are made in everyday life and which factors are important. All local citizens are invited to participate – regardless of which means of transport they use and whether they want to try out new forms of mobility or not.
One part of the citizen science project will be to understand connections with health and environmental factors: Participants will collect data on noise pollution and stress levels for specific everyday routes. Anyone interested in testing active forms of mobility for selected routes can also investigate how the change affects their own mood and health and what environmental impact it has.
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Our research questions:
- How stable are mobility habits?
- What approaches are there to create and consolidate new habits for active mobility?
- How are mobility habits linked to personal experience, health, and sustainability?
Cited literature
1. Olsson, L. E., Huck, J., & Friman, M. (2018). Intention for car use reduction: Applying a stage-based model. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 15(2), 216. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5858285/
2. Schust, P. (03.02.2021). European Mobility Atlas 2021: Zahlen und Fakten zu Verkehr und Mobilität in Europa. https://www.experi-forschung.de/european-mobility-atlas-2021-zahlen-und-fakten-zu-verkehr-und-mobilitaet-in-europa/
3. Rissel, C., Curac, N., Greenaway, M., & Bauman, A. (2012). Physical activity associated with public transport use--a review and modelling of potential benefits. Int J Environ Res Public Health, 9(7), 2454-2478. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph9072454
