"Autotelic travel" is undirected travel. In contrast with directed travel, this is travel for the sake of enjoyment, not in order to reach a destination. In the United States, this has manifested culturally as the tradition of "going for a drive."

But with the new sustainability agenda, and the urgent need to reduce automobile trips for environmental and societal reasons, is this a luxury we can still afford?

A spanner in the works for transport planners

Autotelic travel may seem like a curious concept. But for the people planning our cities, it is jarring. It turns on its head all of the assumptions they use to predict demand for roads.

In conventional models to forecast demand, time spent travelling has been understood under the economic concept of "disutility" (i.e., wasted time). What does it mean if we start to find "utility" in traveling, beyond reaching our destination? That makes for a different set of calculations.

Going for a drive: a biography of autotelic travel

"Going for a drive" has long been part of the rhythms of American life. It is a distinctly North American tradition, buried deep in the national psyche along with drive-in movies and drive-thrus — a cultural moment rarely encountered in the less auto-centric countries of Europe.

Lifestyle magazines are full of assertions that going for a drive can be "cathartic," can get your creative juices going, or can be a cure for stress. It is even (paradoxically) claimed by some as a way to connect with nature. Under these accounts, the "drive can be the prize itself."

But where does the desire to "go for a drive" come from?

For the vast majority of car journeys, it is a stretch to understand how they might be stress relievers. Psychological studies show that the average ride to work increases blood pressure, musculoskeletal problems, lowers frustration tolerance, and results in higher levels of anxiety and hostility.

Now research shows that driving can both be a stressor and a stress reliever, depending on the circumstances, but the fact remains that the majority of car journeys makes us angry and lonely. So why do we do it?

These apparently spontaneous decisions are at least in part the product of skillful marketing by the automobile industry. Cars have been so effectively sold as synonymous with personal freedom over the decades, that the link seems all but natural.

However, just compare the expansive, open roads of your typical car advert with your daily experience of using your car, and the tension will become apparent.

The future of autotelic travel

From a public interest perspective, there is a strong argument that we should be nudging Americans away from this narrative of cars keys as the keys to freedom and autonomy.

California’s battle against drive-thrus is emblematic of a slow, but steady shift away from a perception of cars as instruments of freedom, to hunks of metal that in fact are more likely to trap us in cycles of poor health and congestion.

Indeed, increasing stacks of research reiterate the harms to our health of private cars and profess the physical and psychological benefits of taking the "wonder drug" of going for a walk.

Perhaps what we need is a well-funded “walking lobby” to replace the powerful car lobby? Alternatively, perhaps this brave new technological age will not see the melting away of autotelic travel, but rather its displacement to other technological forms.

A "rail renaissance" is apparently underway, allowing more of us to sit back with a book rather than wilt behind a wheel while we get from A to B. And Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, if ever built, ensures to be an exhilarating way to move around — whether you have a destination in mind or not.

What if train travel in this new age can also pull on our emotions and aspirations?

Economists are already having to tweak their calculations of the "utility" of rail commuting, in an era where telecommuting has become the norm and Wi-Fi is available on trains. Building on the excitement of self-driving cars, “new mobility” innovators have taken it further to experiment with "offices on wheels" that could revolutionize how we see the commute.

Nostalgia and rethinking relaxation

"Going for a drive" stems from nostalgia from another era — but we could just as easily be nostalgic about the more laissez-faire era of smoking on plane, or the Victorian habit of treating our children with cocaine toothache drops….

In fact, new innovations in travel might be less about encouraging consumption of unnecessary journeys, to making those journeys we need to make more comfortable and seamless. At the same time, we should being re-wiring our neurons so that when we get home after a tough day, “going for a walk” displaces “going for a drive” as our go-to stress reliever.