Hi everyone, my name is Ben Illingworth and I’m a master’s student currently studying Transport Planning at the Institute of Transport Studies at the University of Leeds. For my dissertation I am focusing on the travel patterns of people who participate in various forms of leisure cycling including Mountain Biking, Road cycling and BMX.
The link below is a survey that I hope that cyclists across the country will respond to and tell me their travel patterns and participation in cycling. Then I can understand the environmental impact of these travel patterns and propose various changes to make leisure cycling more accessible by all modes (e.g. improved public transport to cycling destinations).
It would be of great help if anyone could take the time to complete the survey because the results could be very useful in improving leisure cycling for everyone. The survey takes 10-15 mins.
It started out OK, but then came #19:"Do you think people should be allowed to use their cars as much as they like?"
If we assume the answer "No" - how are you envisioning that to work out?
Who gets to decide which are approved uses?
Does each citizen get a yearly mileage allowance? Or a number of journeys? Is it adjusted according to where you live, city, urban, rural? Type of work you do? How much time that can be saved on each journey? Counted by minutes or fraction of the journey? By bulk/weight of items to be carried apart from yourself? How would it be enforced?
I believe society could benefit from reduced car use, but reducing car use by other means than making it expensive and/or time-consuming, good luck with that.
Thanks for the feedback! You raise some interesting questions and I totally agree with what your saying (it would be unwise to dramatically reduce car use for all activities/purposes). The purpose of the question was more simplified by attempting to understand the general environmental views of people who regularly partake in leisure cycling. I would just like to know the views on car use of the audience, is their a big enough audience for certain policy strategies to be put in place?
I would just like to know the views on car use of the audience, is their a big enough audience for certain policy strategies to be put in place?
If you're talking about encouraging the use of other means of transportation, I'm sure you'd get a fair bit of acceptance of that. Maybe something like "xx% off the entry fee in this event if you can show a train ticket". But that risks upsettting anyone able to ride in. Or "free parking to all vehicles carrying 3 or more persons". That seems like an easier one to apply. But an actual legal limit to the amount of car usage would be very difficult to implement in a fair and reliable way. Even for a specific event - which to a large degree is free to define their own rules - limited car use would be very hard to enforce. There's nothing stopping someone - apart from the own morals - to park a mile or so away, and only ride in the last stretch.
You need to think back to scientific basics. Proving the existence of something (like car use) is far easier than proving the absence of car use.
