The survey of 758 new parents in Melbourne showed that parenthood continues to be a turning point in people’s lives that leads to decrease in using public transport.
This study shows that first-time parenthood leads to an increase in car oriented travel behavior.
As cities face increasing pressure to reduce levels of private car use, researchers at the university have tried to shed light upon some of the main factors behind new parent’s tendency to adopt car-based mobility.
The research titled ‘Transit Faithfuls’ or ‘Transit Leavers’? Understanding mobility trajectories of new parents’ was led by PhD researcher Laura McCarthy from the at Monash University.
She says enhanced public transport service and dedicated “caregiver” parking at stations could halt congestion in Melbourne by encouraging new parents to continue using public transportation, even after birth of their child.
“Some of the main study findings were that we found that public transport use declined quite significantly for new parents but when we looked at different patterns and characteristics associated with the decline we found that the use was much more pronounced among primary caregivers, so those who are doing most of the travel with the young children experienced drop in public transport use, compared to those were perhaps the non-primary caregivers,” Ms. McCarthy noted.
Perceptions of public transport being un-child-friendly, complexity of travel arrangements, time and budget, lack of caregiver parking at bus and train stations could be the main reasons that make new parents reluctant to use public transport.
The lack of public transport reach into Melbourne’s outer suburban regions has been identified as a main factor for people’s interest to own a car.
“Those parents who are living in outer Melbourne areas tended to have lower public transport use prior to becoming parent but even dropped off further once they did become parents and that just reflects the reach of Melbourne public transport network that tends to be considerably better the close to the CBD you live and terms of service levels tend to decrease the further out in Melbourne people live,” Ms. McCarthy said.
Thirty per cent of respondents said they were frequent users of public transport, in the year prior to becoming parents. After childbirth this dropped to just 14 per cent.
The number of respondents rarely or never using a car decreased to less than 1 per cent, from previous nearly one-third.
The research suggest that a one-size-fits-all policymaking may need to be abandoned, as it found Melbourne’s new parents fall into five distinct transport categories: Transit Leavers, Consistent Drivers, Committed Multimodals, Transit Faithfuls, and Devoted Cyclists.
Ms. McCarthy says the policy changes don’t necessarily need to be expensive or extensive to encourage new parents to return to public transport.
“We also found that some new parents don’t feel welcome on public transport, so even small-scale initiatives such as advertising to make it clear that families with young children are welcome to travel on public transport, I think would help to make it more attractive.”
The research has been supported by Dr. Alexa Delbosc and Professor Graham Currie from Monash University.
Professor Graham says "the biggest single problem with public transport in Australia is that we don't have much and by that I mean the service frequency is the main issue."
He says in Europe, in big cities, you would wait for a bus for a few minutes but in Australia, in many areas, the typical bus frequencies are every 30 minutes to an hour.
"The investment we had in public transport has not been enough. We have always tended to rely on the car, which was fine when the car was meeting our needs, but now our cities are growing to the extent that we need good high quality public transport just like European cities."
