In this paper we assume that people could travel in some cases to escape from something, such as their family, colleagues, or residential or work area. The concept of escaping as a driver to travel complements both the mainstream assumption that travel is a derived demand and the idea that people sometimes travel for the fun of it (and thus derive a positive utility from travelling), and has its origin in sociological literature. We categorize forms of escaping, and link travel to escape (TtE) to other concepts such as travel time budgets. Next we propose a first conceptual model relating factors explaining the motivation for escaping from something, or being able to escape from something, and the subsequent travel behaviour. We then formalize the travel behaviour model with general functions incorporating the role of travel to escape. Next we present the results of a first, small, empirical study showing that some people recognize the concept of escaping. In addition, we discuss the implications of travel motivated by escaping from something, one implication being that there will be more travel than if the concept does not apply, and another implication being the potentially positive value of a low level of accessibility, rather than the high level customarily assumed to be more desirable. We finally discuss implications for future research, and end with a discussion and final conclusion.@en

For developing sustainable travel policies, it may be helpful to identify multimodal travelers, that is, travelers who make use of more than one mode of transport within a given period of time. Of special interest is identifying car drivers who also use public transport and/or bicycle, as this group is more likely to respond to policies that stimulate the use of those modes. It is suggested in the literature that this group may have less biased perceptions and different attitudes towards those modes. This supposition is examined in this paper by conducting a latent class cluster analysis, which identifies (multi)modal travel groups based on the self-reported frequency of mode use. Simultaneously, a membership function is estimated to predict the probability of belonging to each of the five identified (multi)modal travel groups, as a function of attitudinal variables in addition to structural variables. The results indicate that the (near) solo car drivers indeed have more negative attitudes towards public transport and bicycle, while frequent car drivers who also use public transport have less negative public transport attitudes. Although the results suggest that in four of the five identified travel groups, attitudes are congruent with travel mode use, this is not the case for the group who uses public transport most often. This group has relatively favorable car attitudes, and given that many young, low-income travelers belong to this group, it may be expected that at least part of this group will start using car more often once they can afford it. Based on the results, challenges for sustainable policies are formulated for each of the identified (multi)modal travel groups.

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The combined transport and land-use system allows people to travel between activity locations (home, work, family and friends, sports and other recreational locations, etc.). And it allows companies to transport goods in their several stages of production and distribution between related locations. But transport comes at high costs. First, transport costs time and money. In most Western countries people spend 10–15 percent of their income on transport (Schafer and Victor, 2000). On average, and at the aggregate level (e.g., all persons in one country), people travel between 60 and 75 minutes per person per day, in almost all countries worldwide (Mokhtarian and Chen, 2004; Zahavi and Talvitie, 1980; Szalai, 1972). Second, the transport system causes negative impacts on society. Impacts include travel time losses to other users in case of congestion, safety impacts, and environmental impacts. Even for a small country like the Netherlands the costs of congestion, safety and the environment are as large as 14.8–25.3 billion euros (KiM, 2009), around 1.9–3.3 percent of GDP. In the United States the cost of congestion alone in 2010 was estimated to exceed $100 billion (Schrank et al., 2011). Third, transport infrastructure is expensive. Large infrastructure projects often costs billions of euros, and budgets of Ministries of Transport constitute a large share of government budgets in many EU member states and elsewhere.@en