About the session
Young adults in Great Britain and other countries are driving less now than young adults did in the early 1990s. In this presentation I present the findings of a study of young people’s travel behaviour undertaken for the Department for Transport which sought to better understand why young people are driving less than previous generations and identify the future implications of this. I explain how there are multiple, inter-connected reasons for the changes in transport use that have been observed. Most of these lie outside transport. They include changes in the socio-economic, living and family situations of young people, as well as changes in the importance attached to driving in the digital age. The decline in car use seems likely to persist - those who start to drive later tend to drive less when they do start. This has profound implications for transport planning and for policies in transport and other sectors. One key implication is that higher priority needs to be given to ensuring that young people have affordable alternatives to the car for getting to education, employment and social destinations.
