What happens to travel behaviour when the right to park is removed?

Abstract

What happens to travel behaviour when the right to park at a destination is removed? This question, fundamental to travel demand management and land-use planning, has only been partially addressed in the literature so far. The impacts on travel to the destination concerned have been studied, but not the impacts on wider travel behaviour. This paper reports on a natural experiment related to destination parking, where a university removed the right of most undergraduates living off-campus to park on its main suburban campus. A survey was conducted to compare the travel behaviours of two groups of undergraduate students: the first group started before and the second group started after the introduction of the parking restriction (n = 858). The survey captured licence-holding, car availability during the term and vacation periods, and the mode of transport used to travel to campus and for the last trip to another location. The parking restriction was associated with a fall in the modal share of driving to campus of nine percentage points. Car availability during term-time fell by 14 percentage points and licence-holding fell by nine percentage points. The policy change was associated with greater changes amongst females than males. Overall, the results suggest that removing the right of young adults to park at a frequent destination delayed their acquisition of driving licences and cars. These findings may explain part of the fall in licence-holding observed amongst young adults in Great Britain in recent decades.