Children's active travel and independent mobility in four countries: Development, social contributing trends and measures

In many countries a decline in children's active and independent mobility, like walking and cycling is registered. In this paper the development of children's mobility in Denmark, Finland, Great Britain and Norway is compared to examine differences and similarities in these countries. Accessible data are used, which implies that not all of them are directly comparable, but they are employed as indicators of development. The trends are the same in these four countries, an increase in car use and decrease in bicycling and walking. Distance to school has increased, both as a result of bigger units and more children in private schools. Traffic is an important reason for taking children to school by car, but convenience for the parents is also part of it. Organized leisure activities has also contributed to less walking and cycling, in addition to more time pressure in families, increased access to car(s) and easier access to parents as a ‘transport service’ by the help of the mobile phone. The measures that different countries use in trying to meet the challenges of children's mobility tend to focus on the school trip and most often on traffic safety, both at national and local levels

Building future societies? A brief analysis of Braga’s school bus project

This paper seeks to demonstrate the importance of implementing trans- port policies that meet home to school (and vice versa) mobility needs of children and young people. Over the last few years families’ mobility has been given increasing attention. One of the most investigated aspects is home to work mobil- ity. Nowadays there is an urgent need to study and propose intervention measures regarding children’s mobility to school. In fact, studies show that the car is the preferred mode of transportation in Portugal. This trend has undoubtedly negative social, environmental and health consequences. Based on an evaluation study on the School Bus project in Braga (a research- intervention activity of BUILD-Braga Urban Innovation Laboratory Demonstrator), this paper discusses the difficulties in implementing sustainable mobility initiatives, pointing out anticipatory mea- sures that can be taken in medium-sized cities in order to stop the expansion of children’s transportation by car, and give them back spaces in the cities.UIDB/00736/202

THE RELATION BETWEEN DAILY TRAVEL AND USE OF THE HOME COMPUTER

This paper analyzes the relationship between use of the home computer (stationary communication technology) and daily travel activity in general (mobile technology). The empirical analyses are based on two interrelated data sets: a Norwegian national personal travel survey from 1997/98 and a mail survey on the use of information and communication technology at home. Results show no direct substitutionary effects of the use of stationary technology at home on the use of mobile technology. Access to and use of information technology does not seem to have a significant impact on travel activities in daily life; instead, stationary communication seems to be a supplement to activities based on mobile technology. Stationary technology seems to give people who work more than normal weekly working hours greater flexibility in regard to where to work but does not necessarily reduce their travel activity. There is a tendency for people who own home computers to make fewer work trips, but this does not affect the total number of daily trips. The spatial flexibility gives a temporal flexibility, which means that work trips and other trips can be more dispersed over the day. The positive consequence can be a reduction in the rush-hour traffic; the negative is that it is more difficult to offer a high frequency public transport service when travel needs are more spread in time. These analyses also reveal a relationship between the ownership of cars and the ownership of computers, with men and high-income groups being the most frequent users and owners of both cars and home computers