Analysis of Intermodal Travel Behavior: A Case Study from the Nanjing Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Intermodal travel behaviour is accordant with sustainable urban development as it could reduce private car usage for mitigating carbon emissions. It is thus essential to know the characteristics of the intermodal travel behaviour and forecast the market shares to examine the potential effect of transport policies for incentivising intermodal trips. This study aims to understand the underlying preferences of individual commuters with respect to mode choices and to forecast the (changes in) market shares by making non-car alternatives more attractive in order to recommend suitable policies. To achieve this, a stated preference (SP) experiment was firstly conducted in Nanjing, China. Then, the mixed logit model was used to establish the mode choice utility functions. The results confirm that transfer disutility exists and has a negative impact on choosing transfer modes. Car in-vehicle time has lower marginal disutility than the in-vehicle time of other modes, while waiting time causes the most transfer disutility. Finally, different policies are proposed to shift the modes from car to non-car modes. It is found that that improving the transit speed, increasing transit frequency and enhancing the transfer facilities are sustainable transport oriented strategies as they could promote the usage of the public modes.

Keywords: multimodal transport, intermodal travel behaviour, mode choice decisions, modal shift, policy analysis