Bilens roll för mobiliteten – nu och i framtiden

BILENS ROLL FÖR MOBILITETEN
Elderly people, who were regular car users in younger days, strongly
want to continue to use their car in older years. To reconcile this with
continued improvements of traffic safety all three main components of
the road transport system – the road, the car, and the driver – need
further development. For this to happen there is a need for more knowledge
about possible actions to take and their implementation. Laboratory
experiments as well as larger scale tests are promising ways ahead
for this research.
The future role of the car for personal mobility
In the research carried out within the Bisek framework there is little to
indicate that households’ preferences are changing in a way that would
alter the future role of the car for personal mobility in any more profound
way. The transformation of the road transport system that will
have to come about to meet climate policy objectives will require adaptations
of transport policy as well as by households, industry, and public
administrations. Considering existing knowledge about how
households adapt to e.g. economic policy incentives, there are good
reasons to believe that other adaptations than decreasing their travel
by car will dominate. Continued economic growth and hence the rise
of real incomes will facilitate for the households to maintain car use
even in scenarios with increasing car costs. The adaptation rate of the
car fleet will depend on the precise design of economic incentives.
Further research
Within Bisek’s time and resource constraints it has been possible to
initiate and carry out research within three out of five prioritized research
tasks. The remaining two tasks that both should be considered
for prioritization in further research work are:
• Households’ adaptation to new car technology
• Dealing with the social dimensions in transport policy decisions
The research that has been carried out has given a good basic understanding
of the research field. Therefore there is scope for continued
research efforts to concentrate more on implementation of existing
knowledge, though not exclusively since important research issues
have been identified within the areas that have already been covered.
Evaluations of transport policy measures, regulation and infrastructure
projects in a social and economic perspective would be a logical
part of further research.
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