Our reliance on cars is one reason why domestic transport is the UK’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, 2024). Using alternatives, like walking and cycling, can cut these emissions quickly (Brand et al., 2021), much quicker than even the quickest shift towards electric vehicles. Yet we continue to drive everywhere.
Commuting is one everyday activity where car-use remains dominant despite the damage it does to the environment, local communities, our mental health, and our wallets (Metz, 2020). We might explain this by arguing that cars are more convenient, more comfortable, and offer more freedom than alternative options (Credit and O’Driscoll, 2024). But in many cases, this is not true.
A more compelling explanation for why we cannot quit the car is that travel routines are deeply habitual, and that once a pattern for travel is established, it tends to stick despite us knowing better (Verplanken and Aarts, 1999). Indeed, despite vast technological and social change we have witnessed over the past half-century, we make roughly the same number of trips and spend about the same time travelling as we always have (Pooley, 2015). That is, our travel patterns have hardly shifted.
How then, can we encourage shifts toward sustainable travel?
Policymakers often assume that if we change the design of neighbourhoods and cities, or if we alter transport infrastructure and service provision, then people will change their behaviours. But this does not always work, something linked to an incomplete understanding of how local planning interventions interact with “life-events” to spur behavioural change (Thomas, Poortinga, and Sautkina, 2016).
Disrupting routines can knock people out of behavioural “inertia” and prompt them to reassess travel decisions (Walker, Thomas, and Verplanken, 2014). Disruptions occur as people navigate, and transition between, life-stages (Scheiner and Holz-Rau, 2013), but they also occur when local environments change (O’Driscoll et al., 2024). While the former are highly personal life-events (e.g., having children or getting married), the latter typically emerge as the result of land-use and transport planning initiatives (e.g., roadbuilding).
My research examines how people’s choice of commute mode evolves in response to such disruptions (O’Driscoll, 2025). I focus specifically on people who move house because moving house often coincides with disruptions that are internal and external to personal circumstance, allowing me to study the relative importance of different types of disruptions in prompting changes in commute mode choices.
I use survey data covering the whole UK to study these dynamics. I follow 2,068 individuals in the years before and after them moving house, allowing me to track when major life-events occur as well as the types of neighbourhoods’ people move to and move away from.
The research shows that the biggest triggers for changing how people travel aren’t new bike lanes, bus routes, or changes to the neighbourhood at all – they’re changes in life circumstances. Events like starting a new job, having a child, or moving home appear to shake-up daily routines far more powerfully than physical changes in the built environment.
That said, neighbourhood changes do matter, but mostly when they affect how easy it is to get around (i.e., accessibility). When new infrastructure directly improves (or worsens) people’s ability to reach everyday places, then neighbourhood changes become a meaningful nudge toward changing behaviours.
The kind of switch also matters. Shifting from a car to walking or cycling has very different implications than shifting from a car to public transport. Findings revealed that after most major life-events, the likelihood of switching to car increases. I link this to the possibility that cars may provide a sense of stability and control; an anchor when everything else feels in flux. Meanwhile, the probability of switching to public transport is especially sensitive to changes in accessibility, while there appears no dominant trigger which alters the probability of switching to active transport – suggesting that it may be person-specific.
Income also shapes these patterns in important ways. Analysis indicates that lower-income individuals are more likely to change their behaviour mainly following events which invoke practical and/or economic pressures to do so (e.g., changing job). Higher-income individuals, in contrast, appear to be guided more-so by individual-specific considerations, such as tastes and preferences. I say this because there appears no dominant trigger which alters the probability of switching commute mode for these people. Meanwhile, people in the middle react to a wide mix of factors.
My main conclusions are that many of the sparks that ignite behavioural change are personal. But not all of them sit beyond the planner’s toolkit. Initiatives which improve accessibility can get more people onto buses, trams, and trains, but these initiatives may also reduce pressures on low- and mid-income people to avail of cars, giving them more freedom to pursue alternative modes of transport.
Thus, it is not only about changing the physical environment, but also about designing initiatives which make sense given who lives in these environments. To do this, we need to recognise the social and economic realities that make habits stick, and what can be done to break them. This is something within the reach of policymakers.
Connect with the Author
Conor O’Driscoll is an Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen’s Faculty of Spatial Sciences. He uses quantitative research methods to study why people live where they do, and how this impacts everyday behaviours, labour market outcomes, and regional development. Conor has published research exploring the determinants of travel behaviours, land-use patterns, and the economic/environmental costs of everyday behaviours. His expertise lay in the realm of Economic Geography, Regional Science, and Transportation Studies.
: Conor O’Driscoll 
:@conorodriscoll99.bsky.social 
:@conorodriscollx 
:0000-0003-1427-2747