New Drivers in Mobility; What Moves the Dutch in 2012?

Abstract

A mobility analysis, in early 2011, by the Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analyses showed that following the remarkable growth in the 1980s and 1990s, the total amount of national mobility of people in the Netherlands had not increased since 2005. This particularly appeared to apply to car use. Except for the credit crisis around 2008–09, the reasons for this development remained unclear at the time. Based on further analyses of the developments in mobility over the last ten years and some findings from other countries, several hypotheses related to the apparent levelling off of the growth in car use were formulated and investigated in further research. In the first part of this paper, a detailed description of the developments in mobility between 2000 and 2010 is presented, with emphasis on specific trends for various user categories (by travel mode, by age group, by gender). This part can be seen as a description of recent developments in mobility growth. In the second part of the paper, we present the findings of our in-depth research into the causes behind the levelling off of growth in car use.

Keywords:

• peak car
• demographics
• travel behaviour
• car use

Notes