11-07-2025
Here's How Better Buses And Bike Lanes Could Battle Loneliness
Car dependancy has been attributed to a rise in loneliness.
Car dependency can lead to poor health and even general unhappiness, but it may also cause loneliness.
That's according to an analysis by UK thinktank Smart Market Foundation (SMF), which showed that loneliness went down by 5% for every 20% fall in satisfaction with public transport as well as active travel.
"Put another way, failing to provide alternatives to cars is making people more lonely and more isolated," noted senior researcher Gideon Salutin in a post on SMF website.
And, as we've heard time and time again, we are facing a loneliness epidemic: we spend 70% less time with our friends than we did a decade ago and that matters as research from last year suggested it could lead to 30% higher rates of early mortality, on par with smoking 15 cigarettes daily.
Better buses and bike lanes won't solve loneliness entirely, but it could have an impact, according to the SMF.
Car dependency sparks disconnection
The SMF study used an existing Department for Transport study to compare car dependance — based on dissatisfaction with public transport but also including journeys taken by car — with feeling lonely or isolated, controlling for other intervening variables. (The hope was to also capture people who chose to drive even though they had plenty of transport around them — the example given was "SUV owners in Kensington and Chelsea".)
Salutin wrote: 'Across all four loneliness indicators – feeling lonely, left out, isolated, or lacking companionship – in every region, as car dependency increases, people are more likely to feel lonely and disconnected.'
Beyond the loneliness metric, the analysis also suggested that for every 20% decrease in satisfaction with public or active transport options, 4.1% of people felt more left out, 3.2% felt more isolated, and 2.9% felt a lack of companionship.
Why do cars cause loneliness?
Why is this happening? One obvious example is car dependency in a transport desert traps those without a car at home, making it more difficult to visit friends and access social experiences or find work.
Can riding the bus more reduce loneliness?
Salutin suggests the stress and costs of driving could be leaving people feeling vulnerable, and limits some activities — if you're driving, you're not staying in the pub all night drinking (or at least you really shouldn't be.)
Salutin suggests that the physical impact of cars on our environment could be impacting our mental health. "It might also be that the infrastructure we build to support motoring paradoxically builds more barriers, as elevated motorways, wide roads, and sprawling car parks replace what might have been walkable neighbourhoods and green spaces," he wrote.
And, if you're driving, you're not interacting with other people, but cut off from any chance of small talk or community — which may be welcome some of the time, but could be damaging all of the time.
Or as Salutin noted, 'some theorists speculate that cars themselves could be the problem, keeping us shut in our 'little steel protection box,' isolated from the outside world.'
Cars vs loneliness: not that simple
Of course, there's more to loneliness than bike lanes and buses. And Salutin admits that having access to a car can help people reach social spaces, increasing life satisfaction in particular when alternative transport infrastructure is poor — but only to a point.
Passengers wait at the bus stop near the Academy of Athens as a trolleybus arrives in Athens, ... More Greece, on January 15, 2025. (Photo by Giorgos Arapekos/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
"In Athens, with its poor public transport infrastructure, car ownership greatly increases people's life satisfaction," Salutin notes. 'In Oslo, where residents have more alternatives, car ownership still tends to increase satisfaction, though the effects are less pronounced. In Beijing, where residents enjoy some of the most efficient public transportation in the world, car ownership has very little impact at all on life satisfaction.'
He notes that making more than half of trips via cars has been suggested as contributing to loneliness by American researchers — adding that two thirds of journeys outside of London are by private vehicle.
The SMF has called to get that number down below 50% via investment in buses and other local transport, a move which could help reduce loneliness — and solve so many other problems, too.
