Limits to active transport substitution of short car trips

This paper examines trip related factors that affect the potential of active transport modes. The paper reports on the results of a long-term travel survey where daily activity-car travel patterns were automatically monitored for a cohort of people. Analysis of the results demonstrates that 64% of all monitored car trips were shorter than 8 km and can thus theoretically be replaced by active transport modes. After taking into account trip related criteria that may hamper substitution of car trips by active forms of transport, only 9.5% of the monitored trips can still be walked or cycled. If all of these remaining trips were substituted by non-motorized modes, this would correspond to approximately 2% of the travelled distance and 3% of the fuel consumption.