Personal city mobility in the context of sustainable development = Személyes városi mobilitás a fenntartható fejlődés kontextusában

Kivonat, rövid leírás

The mass production of the automobiles, as presented in my dissertation, has made private passenger cars so affordable, that we have reached a point, where most people in the developed countries (and not only there) cannot imagine a day without driving. The number of passenger cars continuously increases. The evolution of the automobile, together with the stable growth of living standards lead to our present addiction to vehicles using fossil fuels. This addiction is so serious, that apart from threatening human health through its negative effects, the inefficient use of personal passenger vehicles is wasting colossal resources all over the planet. Although the growth of car ownership in the developed countries is slowing down, that is mostly the result of saturation, not of new thinking. As a whole the wealthier countries continue to increase their already massive car fleets. The outcome of my research (point 4.3) strongly confirmed my hypotheses: • Passenger car buyers and/or users in their choice of personal cars are motivated by convenience, social status, cost efficiency and not by environmentally friendly attitude. • When choosing the means of travel in the city, citizens are mostly motivated by convenience. • However strong the environmental commitment of the citizens is, in itself it will never be enough in terms of personal city mobility, because their desire for safety and comfort is stronger. • Consequently, the sustainable mobility modes based on minimal private car use cannot be expected to spread spontaneously without the strong limitation of the current conventional mobility based on private car use. • All respondents of my research saw personal driving as the best option for city mobility. Some openly oppose car-free days and dislike parking fees (I called this group Speeding Drivers), some admit to prefer big and expensive cars and consider public transport inferior (the group of Comfort Lovers), others verbally support public transport, but prefer not to use it (the group of Environmentally Conscious); or readily agree to possible future congestion fees due to the expectations that it will reduce traffic volumes and only they themselves will keep driving (the group of Rich & Prudent). Additionally my research revealed that even if a group of people fully agrees with the importance of some measures, it will not make them automatically accept these measures for themselves. Like the importance of speed limitation for safety, with which all people will easily agree, but not all of them will accept the strict GPS based speed control. So even if citizens would generally agree that something should be done to make city mobility sustainable, they might probably choose the least inconvenient path for themselves. The time is ripe to offer different patterns. It is time to change the old "dream image" of car ownership, to replace the false prestige of the urban driver with the modern image of the free urban movement backed by affordable, safe, professional and accurate public transport working like precision mechanism around the clock. Based on my research I can voice the opinion that modern municipalities can make cities better places to live by consistently reducing personal driving and constantly enhancing public transport and the green modes of personal transportation.