Travel together alone or alone together?

The way in which we tend to 'travel together alone' contributes to increasing physical, mental and social health problems. Being sedentary and secluded makes us unhealthy, unhappy and lonely.

What if we learn to recapture the value of 'traveling alone together'? Mobility offers us the potential to be exposed to social and spatial diversity. Being underway can invite us to engage with our surroundings with all our senses. This potential exposure to diversity is positively linked to a large number of societal qualities. We unraveled this potential with Anna Nikolaeva , Meredith Glaser , Morten Skou Nicolaisen and Carmen Chan, AICP in this Open Access article.

In short, being actively exposed to spatial and social diversity increases: Sense of membership, Sense of influence, Sense of integration, Fulfillment of needs, Shared emotional connections, Sense of neighboring, Collective efficacy, Citizen participation, Sense of community, Sense of belonging, Sense of place, Trust.

The measured effects of traveling alone together

Harald Schuster and colleagues set out to see if they could measure these effects. They looked to see if different means of mobility are related with the 'orientation towards the common good'. This considered as a building block of social cohesion and has been shown to benefit both social communities and their residents. Based on a large German dataset of annual surveys they found that cycling was positively correlated with increases in (1) political participation, (2) social participation in organizations, (3) neighborhood solidarity, and neighborly helpfulness. See their full study here.

Public transport as a social space

Together with Monik Kokkola and Anna Nikolaeva (supported by enviolo , BAM Infra Nederland and CROW ) we studied the effects of mobility changes during the COVID lockdown. Through observations and interviews we were especially interested in how people adapted their behavior in public transport in response to these changes. We found that public transport passengers value (and miss) fleeting encounters on the move and see public transport as a social space in cities. There are underlying rituals and norms in interactions, certain atmospheres and modes of mobile engagement. All this contributes to a greater sense of happiness, social well-being, and positive affects throughout journeys and seemingly meaningless interactions. Read the full article here.

This might also explain why people do not uniformly see the loss of their commute as a positive. When we see mobility as a disutility, you would expect to find that a majority of people find it a benefit to not having to commute. Instead, our study found that while this is true for driving, a vast majority of public transport users, cyclists and walkers miss something (something further explored here).