In June 2019, the government of the Flemish Region (Belgium) launched the “mobility score,” a standardized built environment indicator that informs citizens in Flanders about the walking or cycling accessibility from their dwelling to a range of basic amenities and public transport stops. The development of the mobility score was developed to be a tool to raise awareness of the environmental impact of travel. Against this backdrop, this paper assesses the extent to which the mobility score can predict car use and aims to contribute to the line of research that studies travel patterns in relation to accessibility, spatial context, and travel mode choice. Based on the data from the Flemish Travel Behavior Survey, we analyze the effect of the interaction between the built environment, frequency of car use and vehicle kilometers traveled. Our findings illustrate that frequent and intensive car use is not an exclusive feature of suburban and rural residents in Flanders, or of those who travel long distances. The outcomes show that the mobility score can predict the frequency of car travel but only in the inner city. As for other areas, travel behavior shows little variance among respondents. The presence of a company car in a household is a much stronger predictor of vehicle kilometers traveled than any other variable, including the built environment. Travel behavior turns toward car use once a household acquires a car, almost regardless of the type of neighborhoods where respondents live. In Flanders, policy has so far been directed more toward curbing car use than discouraging car ownership. Our findings suggest that it could be more effective to aim for the latter, as this prevents the development of a cycle of car-oriented behavior in the first place.

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In this study, we test the extent to which people who reside in hypothetically car-independent neighbourhoods travel  multimodally and perceive themselves as car dependent. We used the Flemish region as our study case, and defined a car-independent neighbourhood as an area with a high node and a high place value. A cluster analysis with four constituent variables – car use frequency, bicycle use frequency, vehicle kilometers travelled (VKT) and the need for a car to carry out daily activities - led to defining four heterogeneous groups of car owners. We labelled the groups as car-dependent motorists - long distance, car-dependent motorists - short distance, car-independent cyclists and car-dependent cyclists. We found all clusters to be to some extent multimodal. For our selected study area, car ownership does not necessarily induce perceived car-dependence among people who can easily get around by bicycle. Nevertheless, even in an urban setting and when exhibiting multimodal travel patterns, people can perceive their car as indispensable. Perceived car dependence is not necessarily correlated with high VKT or high frequency of car use, neither can we conclude that multimodal behaviour necessarily leads to less VKT.

This article unravels, by employing two binary logistic regressions, the socio-economic profiles of zero-car households in Flanders (Belgium) and sheds light on their residential environment. The employed dataset contains information regarding the socio-economic status and car ownership of all individuals with a home address in Flanders. Furthermore, the study explores the proportion and size of voluntarily car-free and car-less households due to constraints within the Flemish population. It does so by classifying zero-car households based on a spatial typology and the income decile these households belong to. Results indicate that zero-car households are overrepresented at the bottom of the income distribution and are overwhelmingly single. Children’s presence contributes to the likeliness that a household owns a car. The spatial typology (urbanised, suburban, or rural) and the presence of public transport are minor but remain significant contributors. The main contribution of this article is that it highlights that despite the evidence that zero-car households are strongly present in urban areas, the share of zero-car households living in remote areas may not be underestimated. For the total population in Flanders, 5.47% of households may face problems due to their residential location and lack of a car, which comes on top of dealing with modest or low household budgets. Almost 37% of the zero-car population lives in an urbanised area and has a low income. This corresponds with 8.4% of the Flemish population. This group likely experiences a latent demand for car ownership. The households we can confidently identify as car-free, deliberately and voluntarily living without a car, are a minority group and account for approximately 5% of the Flemish population. The article concludes with the notion that involuntarily carlessness can be considered a proxy for vulnerability. However, urban planning centred around proximity, accompanied by housing policy that benefits low-income groups, can act as a buffer against transport vulnerability.