Sustainable Urban Mobility–Multimodality as a Chance for Greener Cities: Evidence from Slovakia

ABSTRACT

The importance of sustainable mobility has also been confirmed this year by the global pandemic of COVID-19, which has reduced the mobility of the population, thereby it has significantly reduced the level of dust, noise, and air pollution from the traffic in most European countries, including the Slovak Republic. App-based and shared-ride services have become highly popular and offer a level of convenience unseen before in the urban mobility systems all over the world. Individual car transport dominates at the expense of sustainable modes of transport in most Slovak cities. The city of Nitra is no exception, as the high number of trips during the peak-hours often leads to severe traffic congestion. One way to contribute to better condition is multimodality that allows urban residents to choose from a range of alternative travel choices. The aim of this paper is to assess the possibilities of multimodality in the context of short distance moves in the city of Nitra as well as to analyse how the change of mode choice variability affects the urban mobility behaviour. For the purpose of meet the objectives of this paper, a marketing research was conducted. The research findings show that the travel behaviour of Nitra’s citizens does not show the elements of sustainable urban mobility as the current infrastructure and overall opportunities are limited. Our findings point to significant differences in attitudes of residents from different urban areas. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.