Abstract
The paper proposes a new discrete choice model, named the Heteroscedastic Polarized Logit (HPL) to investigate choice contexts with one or more alternatives with remarkably low market shares. The proposed model is used to investigate the factors influencing the choice of a bicycle as a travel mode in the National Capital Region (NCR) of Canada. Data from the latest household travel survey of the NCR are used to investigate the mode choices of bikeable trips. Bikeable trips are defined as trips with lengths shorter than 16 km as this is the observed maximum limit of a bicycle trip in the dataset. A large dataset with over 40,000 trip records is used for empirical investigation where the bicycle has the lowest mode share of 3%. The HPL model clearly shows its appropriateness and superiority over comparable models in such a context. The choice to walk is found to be more sensitive to trip length than the choice to cycle, yet walking is found to have three times larger market share than that of cycling. Similarly, motorized modes are found to have low sensitivity to travel time and other impedances and have larger market shares. Women and students are found not to prefer the bicycle as a travel mode. Cycling infrastructure is seen to be effective in increasing the choice of the bicycle as a travel mode, but it also becomes clear that additional soft policy initiatives would be necessary to increase the popularity of cycling among young people, students, and women.
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