Encouraging people to embrace alternatives to the car - still the dominant mode of travel in Switzerland - means factoring human decision-making into the equation.
Swiss people are still deeply attached to their cars. Figures from the Federal Statistical Office bear this out: between 2005 and 2015, around half of all journeys were made by private motorized transport - a category that includes cars, motorcycles, scooters and similar vehicles. Even though Switzerland has an extensive public transport network, habits are seemingly slow to change, and they vary across the country's cultural and language regions. In German-speaking Switzerland, where the level of service is quite high, 25% of trips are made by bus or train. Yet in comparably well-served areas of French-speaking Switzerland and the canton of Ticino, that figure drops to 20% and 13%, respectively. Most Swiss people prefer private motorized transport for commuting and business travel, leisure travel and routine daily journeys. And a staggering 91% of trips that involve accompanying a family member - such as taking a child to an extracurricular activity or an elderly relative to the doctor's - are made by private motorized transport, with public transport lagging well behind at just 7% of such trips.
According to Jules Grand-villemin, a PhD student at EPFL's Laboratory of Urban Sociology (LASUR), encouraging people to leave the car at home starts with understanding how human decision-making influences our travel choices. His research, which aims to inform future public policymaking, examines the complex balance between private motorized transport and public transport, focusing in particular on why people travel as they do. "The idea is to develop flexible options that encourage people to choose alternatives to the car, without forcing them to change," he explains. "As a result of past choices, large swaths of public land are now given over to roads and other car infrastructure. Moving away from that model requires effort from public policymakers as well as users: people have to unlearn one set of habits and become accustomed to another."
Study of 10,000 people in the Lake Geneva region
The Lemanic Panel study, to which Grandvillemin contributed, provides detailed data on the travel choices of a representative sample of 10,000 people in the Lake Geneva region - an area encompassing the cantons of Vaud and Geneva, part of the Chablais region in Valais, the districts of Broye and Gruyère in the canton of Fribourg, and, across the border, the French departments of Ain and Haute-Savoie. The study aims to measure changes in transportation behavior, spending habits and lifestyles more broadly over a five-year period.
The study's findings - which are both more recent and more granular than the Federal Statistical Office data - reveal that, in 2023, 55% of respondents used private motorized transport to commute to work. A further 11% opted for public transport, 15% chose active modes like cycling or walking, and 18% used more than one form of transport. For local leisure trips, 40% of respondents said they traveled by private motorized transport, 52% used active modes and 8% relied on public transport.
Large swaths of public land are now given over to roads and other car infrastructure.
Grandvillemin wanted to gain further insight into how human decision-making influences our travel choices. So he developed an "accessibility score," which measures how easily people living in a given area can reach the everyday destinations they need - such as stores, leisure facilities, schools and doctor's offices - without having to travel by car. He then cross-referenced these scores with the survey data. He found that in areas with high accessibility scores - where alternatives to the car were readily available for a variety of destinations - private motorized transport accounted for 29% of commuting trips. Where accessibility was low, however, that figure rose to 78%. When it came to public transport, 22% of people in high-accessibility areas used it, compared with 1% in places with low accessibility. Grandvillemin explains: "These findings show that people are more likely to use public transport when it serves several places they need to get to."
Grandvillemin developed another metric, this time measuring people's ability to use alternative modes of transport, which he again cross-referenced with the survey data. This second score accounts for the fact that leaving the car at home and using public transport requires a set of organizational and execution skills, from buying tickets and planning routes (including any changes) to having a strong sense of direction and being able to cope with the unexpected. Grandvillemin argues that simply providing public transport infrastructure and hoping people will use it overlooks the importance of these skill sets. His findings support this view: just 35% of respondents with a high "ability score" - i.e., those who are fairly at ease with using public transport - commuted by private motorized transport. Among lower-scorers, the equivalent figure was 84%.
Accessibility and ability
According to Grandvillemin, understanding how people choose to travel - and, in turn, designing targeted, effective public policies - means considering these two factors in tandem. One of the study's more surprising findings is that high accessibility scores do not automatically translate into high levels of ability. Some people live in areas with excellent public transport connections but don't necessarily have the skills or confidence to use them, and ability scores also vary between urban and rural areas. Further research is needed to fully understand the underlying causes.
"In my view, we need to act on three fronts at once: improving public transport provision, ensuring that routes connect a diverse range of destinations, and thinking carefully about how to make places easier to reach for people with lower ability scores," says Grandvillemin. "The greater the effort required to use public transport, the more support people will need - and that will necessarily involve personalized solutions. One way forward could be to run pilot tests in areas where the Lemanic Panel study reveals moderate or low average ability scores across the population. In these places, people could be issued a one-month GA Travelcard and given personal support to help change their travel habits. The idea is to extend a helping hand rather than to force change."
