Cargo bikes as a vehicle for transport equity

About the Project

Supervisory Team: Dr Rich McIlroy

Cargo bikes are promoted as a sustainable alternative to car-based travel, but their use as care infrastructure in a family setting is under-explored. This project seeks to investigate how these technologies function within family contexts and how their use may shape everyday mobility practices, children’s experiences, and transport equity.

The role that cargo bikes might play in family mobility remains under-explored in the UK context. How they fit into, or potentially reshape, existing mobility practices has important implications for gendered patterns of mobility and care, children’s understandings of cycling, and the reproduction of norms around who cycles. This project will explore these themes.

The project is intentionally flexible and will be shaped by you. It may focus on, or combine, several interconnected research strands, such as:

• everyday family practices: exploring how cargo bikes influence school runs, caring responsibilities, trip-chaining, and time pressure, and how different forms of physical, emotional, and planning labour are distributed within households
• children’s experiences of the city: investigating how travelling by cargo bike shapes children’s perceptions of safety, independence, learning, and belonging, as well as their identification with cycling as a mode of transport
• equity and access: examining who is able to adopt cargo bikes and who is excluded, and analysing the role of cost, housing, storage, infrastructure, cultural norms, and policy. This includes critical consideration of whether cargo bikes reduce family mobility inequalities or risk reinforcing existing class differences
• traffic engineering and road safety: analysing how current street design standards accommodate cargo bikes used for family travel and how interventions might be adapted to improve both perceived and objective safety
• cargo bikes and the transport socio-technical system: examining how technologies, infrastructures, institutions, and social norms interact to enable (or constrain) their integration into everyday urban mobility.

Entry requirements

You must have a UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent, in one of the following:

• psychology
• sociology
• urban planning
• transport studies
• design
• any other related fields

Desirable Skills:

• experience in both quantitative and qualitative methods
• personal experience with cycling or family mobility

Fees and funding

We offer a range of funding opportunities for both UK and international students. Horizon Europe fee waivers automatically cover the difference between overseas and UK fees for qualifying students.

Competition-based Presidential Bursaries from the University cover the difference between overseas and UK fees for top-ranked applicants.

Competition-based studentships offered by our schools typically cover UK-level tuition fees and a stipend for living costs for top-ranked applicants.

Funding will be awarded on a rolling basis, so apply early for the best opportunity to be considered.

For more information, please visit our postgraduate research funding pages.

How to apply

Apply now

You need to:

• choose programme type (Research), 2026/27, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
• select Full time or Part time
• search for programme PhD Engineering & the Environment (7175)
• add name of the supervisor in section 2 of the application

Applications should include:

• your CV (resumé)
• 2 academic references
• degree transcripts and certificates to date
• English language qualification (if applicable)

Contact us

Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences

If you have a general question, feps-pgr-apply@soton.ac.uk.

Project leader

For an initial conversation, R.Mcilroy@soton.ac.uk.