Network Effects in Public Transit Use: Evidence from a Spatially Autoregressive Mode Choice Model for New York

Abstract

This article empirically tests for positive network effects in transit use by applying a spatial autoregressive logit mode choice model with 1997/98 work trip data from New York City. Positive network effects exist when people prefer to use transit together with other people as a result of social spill-over. Although these network preferences should differ for each person, because of statistical restrictions in the model, individual network preferences cannot be obtained. However, it is possible to derive econometrically a measure of aggregate network preference. This paper can be seen in the wider context of other recent work focusing on the analysis of spatial dependencies and network effects in travel.