Abstract

The connections between transportation and subjective well-being have received increasing attention in the transportation literature. Yet there are few studies on the relationship between objective well-being and transportation. Objective well-being is the achievement of a persons’ potential in knowledge, health, friendship, and other life domains, through the development of their embodied capacities to know, create and be sociable. The value of these achievements is objective, in the sense that it is not derived from a person’s attitudes or mental state. Thus, objective well-being adds an important dimension to the study of well-being and transportation, as it can explain why active, embodied mobility modes—such as walking and cycling—offer more opportunities for human capacity development, compared to sedentary modes such as driving and riding in a driverless car. Embodied mobility modes activate a well-rounded combination of human capacities thus contributing to better understanding of one’s environment, creative flow and sociability, in turn enhancing one’s overall well-being. This may add important information for transportation planners and urban designers in design and evaluation of mobility environments.