Lund University

At the end of the 20 and the beginning of the 21 century, South-Western Sweden is characterized by the development of small residential satellite localities surrounding the bigger cities. Because of the lack of workplaces in these localities, their inhabitants are forced to commute to the bigger cities for work. A mixture of variables – land planning, bad planning of bus traffic, few travel alternatives, bad weather for a long period of the year – determine the inhabitants of these localities to choose car over bus when traveling to work. This is a problem since the extensive use of cars in the area increases the negative dimension of many environmental issues, amongst which energy consumption and air pollution. However, apart of the determinant variables enumerated above, there have also been identified other items that influence transport behaviours, which are connected to the individual characteristics of the inhabitants of these small localities. This thesis identifies and discusses the demographic and socio-economic variables that determine the daily commuters for work to choose between traveling by car and traveling by bus. To reach this aim, system analysis, secondary analysis of already existing statistics, and primary analysis of recently collected data have been used. The particular case of Dalby, a small locality situated in South-Western Sweden, close to the city of Lund, has been chosen for discussion. Firstly, system analysis is used in order to define the problem. Further, considering the general demographic and socio-economic characteristics of Dalby’s inhabitants, as well as their car ownership and housing situation, it is shown that Dalby is one of the satellite residential localities whose inhabitants have the tendency to prefer car over bus when commuting for work-related purposes. The results of the primary analysis show that income is a major determinant for travel behaviours, but other variables also play an important role – gender, the number of children younger than 15 years old in the household, workplace, owning a personal car, and the number of rooms of the house. Two different profiles have been identified on the basis of this analysis – the profile of the commuter with sustainable travel behaviours, oriented towards bus travel, and the unsustainable commuter, oriented only partially towards bus travel and more towards car travel. The commuters manifesting sustainable travel behaviours – who always commute by bus – are mostly women, not working in international companies, with lower incomes, not having children younger than 15 years, not owning personal cars, who may live in rented or cooperative houses with a lower number of rooms than the second group, and traveling by bus because it is cheap, it fits the working hours, because they have no car, and/or because it is good for the environment. The “unsustainable” commuters travel only sometimes by bus and are mostly men, working in international companies, earning high incomes, who may have children younger than 15 years, who live in owned houses with at least 3 rooms and kitchen, owning their personal cars, and mostly traveling by bus because the partner uses the car and for other reasons. The objective of this analysis is to show the policy makers that they have to implement different policies for different groups of people, in order for these policies to be effective. However, this subject is only briefly approached in the end of the thesis, once again with the aid of system analysis, and it is seen as a necessary future work in this domain.