Resumen
Concern about sustainability is rooted in the growing awareness that human activities have significant environmental impacts. Tackling impacts generated by mobility practices can pass through active mobility promotion. However, this requires knowledge of travel choices of different population groups, in order to be successful. Students are an interesting travelers group with particular living and mobility conditions. Lately, mobility issues have gained an increasing attention within educational institutions. This mobilization may be of benefit for their overall host area. Students can become trend-setters, creating a multiplying effect with their travel choices. Thus, student mobility characteristics require attention. In Serres, Greece, an action plan for active travel promotion was developed and there has been a recent investment on walking and cycling infrastructure. In this framework, the detection of travel patterns and attitudes of local student community can be really helpful for targeting relevant interventions. This paper departs from a research aiming at recording mobility choices of students of the Technological Educational Institute of Central Macedonia (TEI), located in Serres, through a web-based travel survey and at making suggestions for more sustainable travel behaviour. Results demonstrate that students are largely in favor of bicycle, they would welcome a joint bus and bicycle promotion and measures in favor of intermodality, e.g. properly equipped buses in order to have bikes on board. Also, students call for both hard and soft measures, like more cycling paths, additional bicycle parking equipment throughout the city, bike sharing schemes as well as incentives, like discounts in buying and maintaining a bicycle or reduction in bus tickets. This small scale effort is enriched by other recent works concerning Serres in the field of sustainable mobility and attempts to adjust their suggestions to students target group, as a starting point for an active travel strategy for the city.