Using modality styles to understand cycling dissonance: The role of the street-scale environment in commuters' travel mode choice

Abstract

Commuters who live spatially proximate to their workplaces have the greatest potential to commute by cycling. Employing the concept of cycling dissonance—the mismatch of individuals who can commute by cycling given a cyclable distance between home and the workplace but travel by other modes—we examine the role of the street-scale environment in commuters' travel mode choice via a lens of modality styles. Drawing on the household travel survey data for Greater Brisbane, Australia and employing latent class choice modelling, two modality styles are unveiled: (1) car oriented; and (2) multimodal but walking averse. Commuters falling within the first modality style are typically middle-aged adults from households that own motor vehicles. Commuters belonging to the second modality style are younger, less likely to own a car, relatively inelastic to travel time, and less sensitive to street-scale environment settings. While commuters in the first modality style predominantly use cars to commute, their propensity for cycling-to-work would likely be markedly higher if the street-scale environment of their route to work could include cycleways and is relatively flat. Those belonging to the first modality style have a higher potential to shift mode from car to cycling given their likely response to shifts in the street-scale environment. By mapping the residential locations of the two modality style groups across the case study context, we spatially delineated locales where cycling dissonance could be reduced by improving the street-scale environment, which has the capacity to inform place-based strategies in prioritising cycling-supportive investment.