Where sustainable transport and social exclusion meet: households without cars and car dependence in Great Britain

A secondary analysis of the British National Travel Survey for the years 2002-2010 shows that the composition of the group of carless households is a good indicator for the level of car dependence in a local area: indeed, while non-car ownership in peripheral and rural areas very often corresponds to a marginal socio-demographic situation and a lack of autonomous travel, this is less and less true as one moves towards larger urban areas. This is consistent with the recent wave of studies on transport and social exclusion, arguing that, in some types of local area, the car is essential for participation in society. This conclusion is challenging for environmental policy, as it highlights the tensions and trade-offs between social and environmental goals in the domain of transport, and thus the difficulty of achieving the latter. The same analysis also shows that socio-demographic characteristics are the most important determinant of household car ownership: this means that there are limits to what spatial planning interventions, such as carfree developments, can achieve, and points to the need for environmental policies informed by research on car dependent social practices