School commuting: the influence of soft and hard factors to shift to public transport

Abstract

School commuting is critical for modern societies considering its potential and long-lasting impacts in travel behaviour of younger generations, today and in the future. Besides positive health impacts, it is crucial to expose students to more sustainable modes (e.g., walking, cycling, public transport) to form future adults with more sustainable mobility decisions. Despite the vast research on school commuting, scrutinizing the foremost factors that determine the modal choice of households when students commute to school is still challenging.Here, we carry out an analysis of the main factors that impact the willingness to shift to public transport (PT) for school commuting, in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area. Also, we analyse the potential of hard and soft factors to change the households’ perception towards PT and their willingness to shift away from private car. While hard factors relate to interventions in the transport operation characteristics, soft measures act on the users’ behaviour. Based on a survey of 1640 households whose children attend primary, middle and high schools, our results suggest that in order to achieve a modal shift towards PT, we should focus both on Hard factors Frequency and Schedules, Soft Factors and considering the Context of the school.