Article by Elena Colli (GO-Mobility)

When mobility is not a choice

(that is, almost always) 

When reading reports and articles on mobility, it is impossible not to come across headlines proclaiming “the preferences of people” with regard to means of transport. But are our mobility choices truly free, or are they the result of a system that exclusively favours cars? Through the use of metaphors and concrete examples (from pastries to washing machines), this article explores the concept of illusion of choice and its impact on daily habits, analyses and decisions regarding mobility planning. Trigger warning: it also contains critics about current transport models and the data on which they are based (again, it’s always about cognitive bias). Ready?

Would you like a pastry?

In an effective article on daily mobility, author @Tim Adriaansen chooses to open the narrative with a simple scene: a tray full of pastries offered as part of a company snack.

What does a tray of pastries have to do with mobility? It only takes a few lines to realize that the metaphor aptly reveals what happens every day when we leave home, get into our cars, and start the engines. Natural, right? (We’ll come back to this.)

Let’s imagine an office environment: the team leader decides that every day, the department will offer a mid-morning snack to all employees. The next day, trays laden with pastries are offered in sufficient quantities for everyone. Some refuse, perhaps for dietary reasons or intolerances. But overall, 9 out of 10 people choose the pastry. The team leader rejoices with a statement: “Our office loves pastries: 9 out of 10 people prefer pastries over the alternatives offered in the company snack.” There’s a statistical problem here, right?

It’s clear that this is not a real choice: if pastries are the only option, it’s obvious that many people will choose them, especially if they are literally served on silver platters.

Our lives, our habits, and the urban contexts in which we live are shaped around the use of the car, served as the preferred option and often the only alternative. This inevitably influences the simulation models used to study, predict, and imagine mobility scenarios, and on which plans and investments are consequently based. As Adriaansen points out, all this is “complete nonsense”: let’s see why.

The illusion of choice

For decades, planning has made the use of private cars the most convenient option: modifying the historical layout of our cities to accommodate wider roads and parking lots and investing in infrastructure for motorized mobility at the expense of other modes. Roads have been designed to maximize vehicle flow, relegating active mobility to the margins, from the removal or narrowing of sidewalks to the dismantling of tram lines and the reduction of cycling to a sporting and recreational activity, leaving many people without any real viable alternatives. In fact, gradually transforming the territory into a “silver platter” for cars.

Historica Fiat Balilla ADV, 1932. Minute 3:18: “There are no more pedestrians. Let’s get rid of the sidewalks!”

 Just think of the historic tram lines that served over 40 Italian cities in the last century, and of which almost nothing remains today except in four cities (Milan, Turin, Naples, and Rome).

The example of Albano Laziale: from a pedestrian street with double-decker tram lines dismantled to make way for private mobility.

This is the illusion of choice, a cognitive bias that leads us to believe we have more options than actually exist. This bias is commonly used by the automotive industry to reinforce motonormativity, namely the idea that the car is the normal and obvious way to get around.

We have spoken several times about recurring errors in the field of mobility planning: this bias fuels a systematic syndrome called causal fallacy, which occurs when observing a phenomenon and drawing hasty conclusions about cause and effect. In this case: “Most people travel by car, so people prefer cars.” What we are actually observing is not a preference, but the result of a system that facilitates a single choice.

Unfortunately, both the illusion of choice bias and the causal fallacy are recurrent in transportation planning: the transportation models that guide mobility studies and planning are based on historical data that describe a reality that offers almost exclusively the car as the main option. As a result, they reinforce the idea that car demand must be met, without considering what would happen if an equally accessible alternative were offered. Let’s look at another example.

Are you interested in a house with unlimited gas included in the price?

In this case, Todd Litman (2009)[1], a transportation planning expert known for his innovative analyses of mobility policies, especially with regard to parking pricing, comes to our aid. Together with Donald Shoup (2005)[2], he is a leading figure in the debate on parking policy reform, such as reducing or eliminating minimum parking requirements for new buildings. He uses another simple metaphor to explain these positions.

Let’s imagine that one day someone announced: “I have a great idea: let’s create a law that requires all residential buildings to have gas pumps that provide free fuel to residents. Fuel costs will be incorporated into rent. Think of the benefits: no more worries about paying for gas. No more waiting at gas stations. Everyone would benefit, especially the less well-off. It’s a great idea, right?”

We would probably think he was crazy. It would be a clearly unfair, wasteful, and absurd measure: the increased costs would also fall on those who do not own or use a car occasionally, and it would encourage all residents to drive more since gasoline is included in the rent. This would increase the number of cars on the road, congestion, pollution, and urban sprawl, along with the space occupied by gas stations.

Yet, if we replace gas stations with parking lots, we find that this concept is not so different from the current minimum parking standards required for residential and commercial buildings. Abundant, convenient, and free parking will always lead to the perception that cars are the most convenient and comfortable means of transport (when in reality, as in the metaphor, parking is never really free: it has construction and maintenance costs that are paid for by the whole community).

This is where the illusion of choice and the causal fallacy come into play: think about when changes to the use of road space are being considered, such as replacing on-street parking with dedicated lanes for public transport. If parking is currently widely available on the streets but there is no dedicated lane for buses, the system is clearly favouring private mobility. Public transport becomes like a piece of fruit hidden under layers of pastries. Basing planning on how many people choose cars over public transport in these conditions therefore provides misleading data and does not help to understand future behaviour in a reorganized system. Let’s move on to a completely opposite example.

Do you have a washing machine?

Most readers will answer this question with “What a question, of course.” Well, if we catapult ourselves for a moment to the Netherlands and completely change what is offered in the “mobility tray”, we will discover that here the bicycle is considered a sort of mobility appliance, that is, an obvious, functional, and indispensable means of daily transportation, used without particular emphasis or as a status symbol. Just like a washing machine.

How did this happen? By designing the city in such a way that the bicycle is the most logical and obvious means of getting around. Dutch cycling culture is not based on a sporting identity or environmental activism, but on the pure practicality of the vehicle, facilitated by dedicated infrastructure, safe roads, and bicycle-friendly urban design (see the video “I am not a cyclist (and most Dutch people aren’t either”). Again, this is not a choice dictated by ethics or other strong motivations, but simply by the “given” conveyed by the city’s layout, which makes cycling a normal and necessary means of transport, just as much as a washing machine is for washing clothes.

This mentality is very different from that of many other countries, where cycling is often seen as an ecological alternative, a “lifestyle” or a fun or sporting pastime. This approach is reflected in the design of infrastructure, such as cycle paths (where they exist) diverted to secondary roads or city parks. The causal fallacy also manifests itself when assessing the advisability of investing in bicycle or public transport networks. Low levels of bicycle use or public transport occupancy cannot be used as reliable indicators of potential demand, since on the one hand the infrastructure is non-existent or unsafe, and on the other hand the means of transport are infrequent and inadequate. When alternatives to the car are not truly competitive, the ‘choice’ that is observed is actually an illusion and not useful data for planning.

At this point in the article, it should be increasingly clear why talking about ‘choice’ is misleading. And why headlines such as “65% of Italians still choose the car” or “Romans prefer the car to public transport” (even adding “they seem to have no doubts”). Perhaps this is not really the case, and perhaps we will begin to look at these headlines with different eyes.

Headlines from Il Corriere dello Sport, The Map Report e Strade e Autostrade

The evaporations you don’t expect

There is another detail that makes predictions based on historical data fallacious: models often do not take into account that individuals are flexible and that, when faced with changes in their environment, they are able to adapt by acquiring new habits.

20th-century road design was mainly characterized by the idea that the solution to growing congestion was to increase road infrastructure. But as we have seen so far, increasing the convenience and comfort of private traffic only attracts and produces more traffic (as empirically observed by several studies.

In contrast to this idea, there is a body of literature that has coined the term “traffic evaporation.” This phenomenon is observed when, by redesigning roads to make room for other modes of transport, traffic ‘disappears’, exceeding all expectations (and model predictions). This happens when people change their behaviour in ways that models have not been able to predict (for example, by changing their preferred hypermarket or replacing weekly shopping trips with more frequent visits to neighbourhood markets).

Just as in the field of health, prevention is better than cure, the use of demand management strategies is more efficient than supporting observed ‘historical’ behaviours. The very elasticity of people, in fact, always depends on that: on what is offered in the ‘mobility tray’.

We need to diversify the contents of the tray (and study it thoroughly)

Coming back to Adriaansen: in order to reduce emissions and plan for more sustainable and efficient mobility, we cannot rely on data that only reflects the current state of affairs. Instead, we must evaluate the conditions of access to all modes of transport and design systems in which alternatives to the car are truly competitive. Only then will we be able to understand people’s real preferences (and talk about mobility choices).

Transport models built on data collected in car-centric systems suffer from intrinsic biases and cognitive distortions. If distorted models are used to assess the potential for behavioural change, emission reduction targets will always appear difficult to achieve or too costly.

Just like our choices, current models depend on what is offered on a plate: if those who analyse, plan, and administer understand that this offer can be modified through a different allocation of road space and resources, it becomes possible to plan with greater confidence a modal rebalancing that moves in the direction of offering a real alternative to private motorized mobility. Thus, a real possibility of choice.

[1] Litman T. (2009), Parking Requirement Impacts on Housing Affordability, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, http://reconnectingamerica.org/assets/Uploads/parking_housing_2009.pdf

[2] Shoup, D., (2005). The High Cost of Free Parking. Routledge, New York