Findings from various sources of information, such as mobility panels, permanent road traffic recording devices, and model calculation methods, indicate that for the past few years passenger traffic demand in Germany has not been increasing but has shown notable evidence of stagnation. An analysis of various relevant factors clarifies that this has in fact been an emerging tendency. This is true especially with respect to the demographic changes in Germany and the increased probability of more scarce and definitely more expensive oil resources; further stagnation of traffic demand appears imminent. That leads to the conclusion that infrastructure development must not be based on the idea of everlasting growth with expansions in areas in which the symptoms of traffic growth have been most obvious. It will rather be necessary to identify accurately specific areas of growth or stagnation and to find a suitable scale for further development. Future planning should concentrate on modification rather than on expansion of infrastructure facilities.
Since the turn of the millennium, car ownership and car travel among young German adults have decreased noticeably. This paper analyzes these changes in young Germans’ mobility behavior on the basis of a mobility diary survey and an income and expenditure survey. The decrease in car travel by young adults is linked to lower car ownership in this group. However, behavioral changes among car owners are far more important with regard to their overall decrease in car travel. Logistic regression was applied to identify the attributes of young households that are associated with low and altering car ownership. This model indicated that structural changes in the population concerning income, employment, household composition, and residential location account for the majority of the decrease in car ownership among young households. However, the model also showed that, all things being equal, the probability of car ownership has changed. Specifically, the gender gap for car ownership has almost disappeared because young men are less likely to own a car today than in the 1990s. The study also investigated changes in car use by car owners. The results showed that men have reduced their total travel and that both men and women have reduced their car mode share and exhibit increasingly multimodal behavior.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.