Navigating the shift: strategies beyond “build it and they will come” for sustainable mobility in Quebec

Passenger transport is an important contributor to unsustainable urban systems. To achieve the necessary socio-ecological transition will require overcoming the entrenched system of automobility. Composed of several mutually reinforcing components, this system has conferred psychosocial dimensions to car ownership and use that leads to important institutional, political, and individual resistance to change both car-centric transportation infrastructure and individual travel behaviour. For this reason, a growing consensus suggests that transitioning to a sustainable mobility system requires a more holistic approach that applies a synergistic integration of “hard” supply-side measures and “soft” demand-side solutions. This means increasing non-automobile accessibility and supporting such change with soft travel behaviour change solutions that target social-psychological barriers to change. While such approaches have demonstrated their effectiveness around the world, this second category of interventions remains underutilized, particularly in North America. Drawing from social psychology and a North American case study, this chapter proposes a theory-to-practice guide for practitioners to designing effective voluntary travel behaviour change interventions based on the Stage Model of Self-Regulated Behaviour Change (SSBC). A four-level integration framework for intervention design based on the SSBC is proposed. The framework proposes intervention approaches from using the model as a simple diagnostic tool to a complete integration to deliver a fully individualized and stage-tailored intervention. Stage-specific messages and strategies are described to shift people away from car use towards active, collective, and shared mobility options. The chapter concludes on suggestions for collaborative efforts between researchers and practitioners to design, evaluate, and enhance the effectiveness of these interventions, thus moving beyond infrastructure-only solutions to foster a successful transition to sustainable mobility in Québec.