# Mobility Patterns of Students: Evidence from Tricity Area, Poland
## 5 Discussion  
The research results allow comparing the attitudes and choices in the mobility area made by Polish students--young adults living in the Tricity area and people of the same age living in different countries. This comparison may also include the level of matching of these characteristics of the Polish Y Generation to the well-established description of this generation contained in the identified subject literature and literature on similar topics, oscillating around mobility, transport and general descriptions of the studied cohort. This study partially confirmed the characteristics of the Y Generation, such as impatience, openness to other nations and races, willingness to achieve work-life balance (including flexible working hours) [53], being digital natives [15], consumerism and getting job satisfaction [55; 89], willingness to learn new things [90], unwillingness to be forced to follow traditional schemes [59]. However, the respondents partially present features related to those that are attributed to the X Generation: high priority given to work, propensity to save, preferring face-to-face meetings instead of contacts in the virtual sphere, respect for older generations, consultation on important decisions instead of compulsive behaviors [8; 10; 62; 77]. This testifies to the fact that the characteristics of the Polish Generation Y differ from the \"classical\" description presented in other societies, especially Western European [4; 7; 9; 33; 34; 53; 61; 67; 70; 71; 73]. Perhaps this is due to the country's political and economic past that still to this day affects the post-communist societies of Central and Eastern Europe, also affecting the generation that was born in the era of capitalism but influenced by parents who remember the times of socialism [91]. Unfortunately, no similar data for the same topic was available about the Y Generation in other countries with a history similar to Poland, so such comparisons are impossible to be made. The active Polish commuters presented the attitudes most compatible with the characteristics of the Ys described in the literature for Canadian [62], Swedish [92], British [93], German [4; 9] societies. They also presented a high level of environmental awareness, broadly described also by [PERSON] [94] and [PERSON] et al. [22]. The main transport mode for the surveyed young adults is public transport, which is confirmed by other research to be very popular in Poland and for many years one of the highest levels in Europe [95; 96; 97]. In turn, in the USA, young adults, probably because of the strong commitment to car culture, usually drive alone (68.8%) or carpool (9.2%) [63], thus developing different, car-oriented mobility patterns [98]. This car culture was also observed in the UK [93], to some extent, in Germany [7] and Australia [99]. In the multi-country studies, the respondents declare willingness to buy or lease a car [21], but are also, in general, interested in shared economy solutions and non-car transport modes--public transport and active modes [55]. This, consequently, can lead to the conclusion that they have strong ecological attitudes. What is more, the Y Generation's travel demand is decreasing [8; 9; 62; 75]. However, despite the growing ecological awareness, Y Generation is still attached to the car, and this will probably increase even more in the future when they start the next life stage (employment, having children) [59; 70]. The respondents in the three subgroups (car drivers, public transport commuters and active commuters) presented significantly different opinions about comfort and unlimited mobility delivered by the primary means of transport. What was interesting, the active commuters were the group that rated this area higher than the remaining two respondent subgroups.