The Active Travel Backlash Paradox

Transport is a highly contentious issue in contemporary societies, and the success of policies in favor of active mobility largely depends on their public acceptance. It is thus, of the utmost importance to understand the public attitudes and the determinants of organized opposition towards these new types of policies, that aim to plan for sustainable travel through built environment intervention.

Mayors of cities like Barcelona, Detroit, Montreal, and Milan have seen their progressive active transport programmes faced with apparently massive opposition waves, to later see themselves re-elected in major landslide-wins at the polls. This might be due to the so called active transport backlash paradox: a loud opposing public opinion concealing an actual high rate of policy-acceptance by the silent local citizen majority.

Protest in Oxford
Valérie Plante, mayor of Monréal. Photo by Pedro Ruiz (Le Devoir)

The existence of an Active Travel Backlash Paradox has, to date, only been confirmed by anecdotal evidence. The ATRAPA project intents to put this hypothesis to test in seven European cities to determine whether there is a dissonance between public opinion creators and the perception of lay citizens.