Indexing the contribution of household travel behaviour to sustainability

This paper describes the application of a robust policy relevant methodology for the assessment of travel behaviour in terms of a household sustainability index (HSI). Results from a survey of 1000 households in the Belfast (The capital city of Northern Ireland.) City Region (radius of 50 km) show that householders fail to reconcile their lifestyle and travel patterns with sustainability and moreover the popular trend for the provision of homes in suburbanised settlements is counterproductive in terms of sustainability. From a travel behaviour perspective, brownfield sites are shown to be more sustainable than suburbanised settlements and that suburbanisation in general is prejudicial to sustainable travel albeit that established residents behave more sustainably than their newcomer counterparts.