Travel with dogs: the need to accommodate “messy trips” in healthy and sustainable transport transitions

Abstract

Private car dependency is widely recognised as problematic: for human health through injury, respiratory illness, declining rates of physical activity and the erosion of the social ties that allow us to flourish, environmentally through carbon emissions and reliance on a finite resource, and economically through the costs of traffic congestion. While some of these problems can be remedied with future technologies like autonomous and electric vehicles, all can be mitigated with less use of the private car in the first place. This paper seeks to examine barriers to the use of healthier and more sustainable transport modes. We use the way people travel with dogs as a way to demonstrate the need for transport scholars to explore what we call “messy trips”, and transport providers to accommodate such mess. Using data from a survey of 1,057 dog owners in a city where dogs are restricted from using public transport, we consider three examples of trips with dogs. The analysis finds that while regular dog walking trips usually occur on foot, there are other activities that people do with their dog and these activities are often accommodated by private car. Responsible dog ownership is an ostensibly health promoting activity, however if dogs are not accommodated by sustainable transport systems it is a practice with the unintended consequence of perpetuating private car use.