Neighborhood Influences on Travel Behavior and Availability Constraints

Abstract

Traditionally, transportation demand studies have, for the most part, viewed modal choice in terms of an aggregate system-wide function. However, it seems reasonable to expect that the travel decision may be influenced by a composite of factors that include not only availability conditions, but determinants relating to neighborhood characteristics and peer-group pressures. In this paper, supply-side constraints on availability were used to segment the market and logit probabilistic choice models were fitted to each segment. It was found that inducements to individuals to alter their modal choice must consider not only cost factors and standard demographics, but also peer-group (class) constraints. System-wide approaches will fail to consider these important demand considerations.