The influence of urban patterns, mostly urban density, on mobility behaviour has been widely studied in the last two decades. A great number of studies focused essentially on the main conurbations and metropolitan areas. The conclusions of a large number of these studies pointed to that in large urban areas the land use patterns has a moderate to strong influence in the mobility pattern. However few studies analyzed this type of relation in the context of small and medium cities, outside the area of major metropolitan areas. The current study is focused on two Portuguese medium cities, Santarem and Tomar, which have on average about 15.000 inhabitants, and it aims to contribute to the enlightenment of this less studied area. The results of two mobility surveys made in 2003, in the context of two mobility plans are analyzed. Since that in both cities there are no efficient urban public transport systems, a binary logit model is drawn (car use or other modes, essentially walking) for each one of the case studies. In the proposed models, land use variables (urban density, density of public parking supply and accessibility indicators) and socio-economical variables (age, social status, household composition, car availability) are included in order to identify its weight in the modal choice of home based trips. The obtained results, in both models, are compared and discussed, in order to identify the real weight of urban density as an explicative variable of modal split in the context of medium and small cities. For the covering abstract please see ITRD E135207.
Samenvatting