While the majority of our sample was generally satisfied with their weekly physical activity (59%), only 2% declared having vigorous physical activity every day, and only 5% declared to have any moderate PA daily. In contrast, 55% of the sample declared walking at least for a bout of 10 minutes everyday, and 55% declared that it was impossible for them to increase their physical activity due to lack of time. Interestingly, 13% of the sample declared that they could not increase physical activity due to not being able to travel more time or travel to a specific destination where to be active. For 92% of the sample their daily combination of modes of transport allows them to manage all their daily tasks, however 31% of them feel that their available time is always or often too short in relation with their daily travel and activity needs. A total of 52% of the sample declares that they would increase their physical activity if they had more time available. Preliminary analysis has demonstrated active transport users tend to be more satisfied with their overall physical activity, even if they are also the ones that more often spend longer times in trips and transportation. This indicates that active transport users are well-aware of the physical activity benefits of their modal choice, especially bike-users. It also indicates that there is a potential to increase the modal share of active travel, and that would not end up generating a lack of physical activity due to having less time to devote to exercising or less capacity to reach physical activity locations. Rather, the gains in physical activity derived directly from walking and cycling would compensate for the potential increase in total travel times to reach daily destinations and the potential accessibility loss derived from smaller reachable areas and more concentrated activity spaces.
One must bear in mind that the results from this project are still under development, as full mediation analysis are being run in order to completely account for time availability in the balance between the characteristics of the activity space, the attributes of the urban built environment and the modal choice and travel behavior of participants. Thus, the preliminary conclusions reached by the TUASPA project will need to be replicated and extended to different urban environments. Available results however point out towards the importance of taking time availability into account in further spatial energetics studies. Most importantly, understanding perception of lack of time as a key factor when dealing with public policies and programs aimed at incrementing physical activity levels at a population level. The TUASPA project confirms the existence of a complex set of balances and tradeoffs at the individual level when taking everyday decisions regarding time use, trip behavior and physical activity. Only by understanding these decisions will we be able to design better policies that can effectively raise physical activity levels. In that context, our data seems to indicate that the promotion of active transport in combination with urban environments can sustain proximity dynamics and the concentration of travel distances, might be in fact a valuable tool to get people to be more active.
