Incorporating Inertia in Mode Choice and Influential Factors of Car Stickiness: Implications for Shifts to Public Transit

Lijun Sun,Kun Gao

doi:10.7307/ptt.v30i3.2507

Abstract

To explore efficient strategies of adjusting travel mode structure and support scientific implements of public transit system, this paper investigated travelers’ mode choice behavior in a multimodal network incorporating inertia in utility specifications. Comprehensive stated preference surveys considering four modes and four key decisive variables were designed, and face-to-face investigations were conducted to collect reliable data in Shanghai. The discrete choice technique considering mode-specific inertias was employed for modeling. The influencing factors of car stickiness were particularly explored. The results show that there are significant and mode-specific inertias in travelers’ choices of travel mode. The inertia of car users shifting to other modes is considerably large compared to inertias of public transit users. Travel time reliability and crowdedness in public transit are identified to be crucial factors influencing car users’ willingness to use public transit. Demographic attributes (age, income, education level and gender), spatial context features (commuting duration) and the regime of flexible work time are found to be significant influential variables of car stickiness. Moreover, direct and cross elasticity analyses were executed to show practical implications of shifting car users to public transit. The results provide serviceable support for transport planning and strategy making.

Highlights

Excessive private car usage in Chinese metropolises has led to increasingly severe transport issues like traffic congestion and air pollution
The mode-specific inertia terms imply that transport policies like car rationing and numbered license ban, which forces car users to use public transit sometimes, could break car users’ repeated commuting contexts to some degree and increase their adoption of public transit
The survey incorporated four modes and four decisive attributes, including travel time reliability and in-vehicle crowding in scenarios

Summary

Introduction

Excessive private car usage in Chinese metropolises has led to increasingly severe transport issues like traffic congestion and air pollution. Mode choice behavior has been traditionally modeled using microeconomic theories based on the assumption that the individual selects the one with the maximum expected utility among all available alternatives after trade-offs between attributes (called “ideal maximization”). It has been noted in recent behavior studies that travelers might not be totally in line with the “ideal maximization” assumption in some situations, such as repeated commuting trips. The effectiveness of travel demand management systems, which are designed to attract car users to other modes is likely to be attenuated This is exactly the dilemma happening in Shanghai. The influences of inertia in mode choice have been hardly considered in transport planning or appraisal in China due to the fact that scarce work has Promet – Traffic&Transportation, Vol 30, 2018, No 3, 293-303

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