Transport User Voice – September 2021 – The path to net zero

27 August 2021

How do people feel about sustainable transport?

Have you been thinking about how you can reduce your carbon footprint? We talked to transport users about their transport choices and the issue of sustainability.

Transport Focus’s latest report, The journey towards sustainable travel, looks at what people think about sustainability right now and how Government’s plans to decarbonise transport can be implemented.

We spoke to 80 people from across Great Britain, using online focus groups and an online community, to explore their attitudes, behaviours, and future intentions.

This is the first step in our work on decarbonisation and sustainability in transport. As the user representative, we are well-placed and keen to assist in helping improvements to be made. Transport Focus wants to play a leading role in how behaviour change can be encouraged so that people are able to choose more sustainable forms of transport.

Key findings from this research:

• transport users see sustainability as a vague concept that is hard to act on outside of key issues like recycling and adopting green energy
• within the sustainability conversation, transport doesn’t immediately come to people’s minds and isn’t a key driver when making decisions on how to travel
• people see sustainable transport as expensive and inconvenient but also recognise it could result in better air quality and fewer cars on roads
• there are no easy wins, so improving sustainability in transport will require a combination of interventions at a personal, social, and government and industry level.

As we come out of Covid-19 and people commence their own ‘new normals’ we will be looking at these issues in more detail to try to understand what is needed to support consumers ability to change behaviour.

In addition to helping make public transport more attractive, we are planning new mode-specific work such as a survey on the experience of electric vehicle recharging on motorways and major ‘A’ roads.

Contact us if you would talk about this research in more detail or about our upcoming work on sustainable travel.

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