This paper studies transport mode choice and the travel behavior of different socio-demographic groups in a middle size European city. Data has been extracted from an extensive Origin-Destination survey (10,029 individuals and 28,225 trips) conducted in Trieste in 2002-2003. The gender, age, employment and vehicle availability are important variables influencing transport mode choice. These variables have been explicitly introduced in the utility function of a Random Utility Model (RUM), the Multinomial Logit Model (MLM). The proposed model allows to evaluate the effects of the different transportation planning initiatives on different socio-demographic groups. The effects of any transportation initiatives may not impact the population as a whole and can be quite different for each socio-demographic group. These differences should be considered within the assessment of any transportation planning process for two reasons: they improve the performance of the policy design phase and they increase the predictability of the effects caused by the chosen transportation scenario. Hence, the introduction of socio-demographic variables within a transport mode choice model should be aimed not only to improve the statistical evaluation of the model, but also to increase its descriptive potentialities.
Samenvatting