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Abstract
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The EU-wide survey presented here was carried out in 2014 with the objective of gathering in order a number of transport and mobility indicators on transport user preferences at both urban and long-distance level in a uniform way, with emphasis on the potential of emerging transport technologies and the acceptability of various transport policy measures.
The CAWI (Computer Aided Web Interview) survey covered all 28 Member States of the European Union with the same questionnaire translated in the local languages. Samples of 1000 individuals in each country reflected the composition of adult population (from 16 years on) in terms of gender, age class, employment status, education level and living region.
The survey provided a rich and comparable picture of mobility across the 28 EU countries; many similarities across countries were found together with some differences. In a way, the findings suggest that, despite some national peculiarities, mobility habits and behaviour are relatively homogenous in Europe and are determined especially by socio-economic drivers.
The result of the survey confirmed that passenger mobility in EU is heavily centred on personal car, which is the most used transport mode also for long distance trips. Relatively higher modal share in East European countries appears to be driven mainly by the lower car availability rather than higher quality of public transport services.
Europeans' trips are essentially local, even though there is a share of citizens travelling frequently over longer distances. In particular, individuals with highly qualified jobs travel significantly more than others above 1000 km not only for business but also for leisure.
According to the survey results, the attitude towards electric vehicles is rather positive: one third of EU citizens declared to be willing to consider purchasing a battery or hybrid car in the next future. The picture for car sharing is more blurred: only a minority is interested in this service and, interestingly, half of those interested do not see this service as an actual alternative to car ownership. Opinions in relation to policy issues such as the measures for the internalization of environmental effects of transport are quite differentiated but in general regulatory restrictions seem to be more acceptable than pricing measures.
Language: en |