Alpine Awareness is a project co-financed by ERDF
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Over the last few decades, most European regions and territories have experienced major changes in their travel trends.
There are many reasons for this: -Urban sprawl firstly, which has increased the population’s dependency on cars, due to the increased distance between living and working areas. This dependency on cars was accompanied by an increase in car possession with an increasing number of homes having 2, even 3 vehicles per household. This trend whereby families possess several cars rendered the use of cars for everyday purposes easy, even “natural”, as well as for leisure purposes (holidays in particular, trips from home to work, schools, etc.).  -Changes in the pace of life. In France, for example, the reduced working week has been conducive to several short stays in the year (replacing longer holidays), which has gone hand in hand with an increase in short and local trips, for example. More generally, in Europe flexibility in the working world has been accompanied in the same way by staggered trips over the year, with this great freedom often translating into motorised and solitary trips. 
-Cultural dependency. The psychological and cultural place that the car takes varies from one country to another in Europe, but it generally ranks fairly high. Beyond the available information – which is not always sufficient but which is already well known, beyond public transport alternatives which can be improved but which already exist - there is generally a major trend to use cars which is undoubtedly one of the major stumbling blocks when looking for other ways of travelling.
The mountains and the Alps, as elsewhere, have experienced this major increase in the number of motorised trips, with their negative consequences on the environment and health: air pollution, noise, water pollution, environmental damage to due to road infrastructures and excess visitation of certain sites which have been preserved until now. In the face of climatic warming and its catastrophic effect on the ecosystem, (glacier formation, fall in the average snowfall in mountain areas, torrential rainfall and unusual drought, flooding, accelerated soil erosion, species extinction) and the mountain economy (shorter ski seasons), it stands to reason that the trips at the very origin of the main gas emissions causing the greenhouse effect are prioritised in mountainous regions.   In this context of per households possessing an excess of vehicles and in the face of the increased diversity in activity and the cultural dependency on cars, a change in travelling modes would demand major concerted action to reverse the trend (see objectives).
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