How did we travel in the past and what has changed?

Most recent academic writing on mobility in the twenty-first century, and probably most popular opinion, tends to assume that, at least in some respects, levels of mobility and how we travel have changed dramatically over the past two centuries (Cresswell, 2006; Urry, 2007; Adey, 2010; Cresswell and Merriman, 2011; Grieco and Urry, 2012). At one level this is of course the case. Most people on a moderate income, and in many parts of the world, can if they wish fly almost anywhere at short notice should they need to. Most people, in richer parts of the world at least, have access to personal transport that gives them the freedom to travel quickly and conveniently in their everyday lives, and new forms of communication both allow almost instant interaction over long distances and provide access to information about remote places that in the past would have been hard to obtain. In these respects mobility in the twenty-first century is dramatically different from what it was in (for instance) 1800. However, it can also be argued that despite these obvious differences there are also many consistencies and similarities. Even in the richest countries of the world most everyday travel is over short distances and on repeated routes; all the basic technology underpinning the main forms of transport that people use in their everyday lives has existed for at least a century; and the reasons why people travel – and the constraints that they experience – have altered little over time (Pooley et al, 2005a). This chapter explores these issues by focusing on changes in everyday mobility in Britain over about the last 200 years, with particular emphasis on the role of walking and cycling. The following chapter places these changes in a broader context by examining the present-day variability in travel experiences in different parts of the globe.

Three key issues underpin discussion in this chapter. Together, it is argued that they begin to explain the consistency of experience in everyday travel in Britain over the past two centuries. We do not attempt a comprehensive overview of the evolution of urban transport in Britain: excellent reviews are available elsewhere (Dyos and Aldcroft, 1969; Cannadine and Reader, 1982; Freeman and Aldcroft, 1988; Armstrong, 2000).