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• Gender and interdependence emerge as key issues when analyzing mobility barriers. • Mobility barriers are different depending on gender, lifecycle, age, ethnicity. • Linking time-use surveys and ethnographic methods are useful for transport research. • Ethnography provide an understanding of individual and collective mobility strategies. Combining traditional transport research tools with qualitative research methods, particularly ethnography, can contribute to our understanding of the complexity of mobility strategies, particularly their gendered differences. Ethnographic approaches can both explain and disentangle some of the results that emerge from travel and time use surveys, hence providing a more complete picture of how and why these strategies take place, and the barriers people face when moving in the city. Using research-case studies based on in the city of Concepcion, Chile, the paper describes the application of these methods, presenting results which are particularly gender sensitive, as they shed light on the difficulty of understanding mobility strategies as individually decided and conceived, and help to explain how mobility strategies are interdependent and how determinant issues of care are in terms of mobility decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a social activity-travel generation model, which explicitly incorporates the individual’s social dimension through the concept of personal networks, modeling the multilevel structure of social relations defined by these networks. The objective of the analysis is to study the relevance of the social dimension as a source of explanation of social activity-travel generation behavior between an individual and each relevant person of their social life. The paper uses a disaggregated perspective of personal networks, explicitly incorporating the characteristics of each network member as well as the characteristics of the overall social structure. Using an ordinal multilevel specification that accounts for the social network in which individuals are embedded, four dimensions are studied: personal characteristics, “with whom” activities are performed, social network composition and structure, and ICT (information and communication technology) interaction. The results show that a proper and complete understanding of social activity generation requires going beyond the individualistic paradigm, explicitly incorporating the role of the social dimension in the study of this decision-making process. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An understanding of activity choices and duration is a key requirement for better policy making, in transport and beyond. Previous studies have failed to make the important link with individuals’ social context. In this paper, the Multiple Discrete-Continuous Nested Extreme Value (MDCNEV) model is applied to the choice of activity type and duration over the course of two days, using data from the Chilean city of Concepción. In common with other studies, heterogeneity across decision makers is accommodated in the model by analysing the impact of different socio-demographic, mobility and residential location variables on both the activity choice and the time allocation decision. In addition, different social network and social capital measures are found to be significantly correlated with the choice and duration of different activities, and we show how these relationships seem to differ from the effects of socio-demographic variables. Finally, we perform a forecasting exercise using the MDCNEV model, highlighting the differences in substitution patterns from a standard MDCEV model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to model the travel behaviour of socially disadvantaged population segments in the United Kingdom (UK) using the data from the UK National Travel Survey 2002–2010. This was achieved by introducing additional socioeconomic variables into a standard national-level trip end model (TEM) and using purpose-based analysis of the travel behaviours of certain key socially disadvantaged groups. Specifically the paper aims to explore how far the economic and social disadvantages of these individuals can be used to explain the inequalities in their travel behaviours. The models demonstrated important differences in travel behaviours according to household income, presence of children in the household, possession of a driver’s licence and belonging to a vulnerable population group, such as being disabled, non-white or having single parent household status. In the case of household income, there was a non-linear relationship with trip frequency and a linear one with distance travelled. The recent economic austerity measures that have been introduced in the UK and many other European countries have led to major cutbacks in public subsidies for socially necessary transport services, making results such as these increasingly important for transport policy decision-making. The results indicate that the inclusion of additional socioeconomic variables is useful for identifying significant differences in the trip patterns and distances travelled by low-income. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical review of the progress in understanding the linkages between transport disadvantage and social exclusion. It follows earlier work in proposing social capital as a concept that mediates those linkages but argues that transport researchers must not confine themselves to conceptualisations of social capital as predominantly benign and capable of reducing transport disadvantage and social exclusion. A range of hypothetical pathways is discussed, highlighting the Janus-faced character of social capital as a medium for both the effectuation of progressive social change and the perpetuation and creation of social inequalities. An analysis is provided of the extent to which the recent transport-related literature supports or rejects the hypothesised pathways, and key avenues for future research are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]