Abstract

Car dependence is strictly related to transport poverty. In a car dependent situation, people need to use a car to move and access those opportunities that are essential to satisfy their needs, due to the lack of alternative transport modes (Mattioli, 2016). Nowadays, most of Latin America metropolises share similar patterns of social inequality, residential segregation or unequal allocation of infrastructures and transport networks. On the outskirts of the Santiago metropolitan area, daily mobility can be even more unequal, due to the need to cover long distances to access essential activities and the dependence on the car to make these trips (Tiznado-Aitken et al., 2023). Based a survey carried out in 2020, we explain the determinants of the mode choice in the outskirts of Santiago de Chile. More precisely, we consider the potential of perceived accessibility to explain this choice in four municipalities from the Metropolitan Region, two peripheral (Maipú and Quilicura) and two peri-urban (Padre Hurtado and Colina).

Until now, most of the studies on mobility issues tend to focus on urban areas in a Global North and urban core settings, while periurban and peripheral tend to receive less attention. This study therefore provides several contributions to the existing literature. To the best of our knowledge, this work is also the first to introduce perceived accessibility in order to explain mode choice in the Global South context. Moreover, the paper discuss the existing mismatching between subjective and objective accessibility. Finally, this work underlines the differences between periurban and peripheral areas in mode choice process.

Our work is based on the discrete choice analysis methods and applications to the field of transport demand. Early applications of discrete choice models mostly focused on mode choice, relying on modal attributes and socioeconomic characteristics to explain mode choice. In particular, car dependence is a dimension of transport poverty whose subjective dimensions have been limitedly explored. However, this choice is more complex and unobserved factors (such as perceptions of the environment, accessibility, feasibility) have relevant effects on travel behavior. In this sense, the framework of modeling choice behavior was extended with the emergence of the Integrated Choice and Latent Variable (ICLV) model (Ben-Akiva et al., 1999). We therefore conducted an analysis based ICLV model, considering a set of 3 alternatives (car, public transport or active mode) and 2 trip purposes (work and health). We made a factor analysis on our set of psychometrics indicators and “perceived accessibility” appeared to be the most relevant latent variable. Perceived accessibility reflects how individuals rate their environment and their subjective ability to reach a destination and “how people rate the conditions in which they live” (Lättman et al., 2018).

Results showed that the introduction of a latent variable in our mode choice model increased the quality of our estimations and provided a better understanding of the mode choice process than a simple logit model. Moreover, perceived accessibility highly contributes to explain the choice of using of the car in these specific areas. In particular, introducing perceived accessibility into the model shows that mobility depends more on individual’s preferences than on territory objective characteristics when choosing to travel to a constraint destination. The latent variable has a positive net impact on the utilities for both car and public transport, which means that a higher perceived accessibility increases the likelihood of choosing these modes, with a slightly more important effect on public transport. Our results tend to belies Lättman’s findings that underlines that car and public transport users’ perceived accessibility levels were lower than bicycle users’. Moreover, in these areas, monetary costs have no significant explanation power and car appears to be preferred in periurban municipalities, where the integrated public transport system is absent. These results are very relevant to consider for urban sustainability and forthcoming planning strategies.

Keywords: discrete choice, mode choice, perceived accessibility, car dependence, metropolitan areas

References:

Ben-Akiva, M., McFadden, D., Gärling, T., Gopinath, D., Walker, J., Bolduc, D., Börsch-Supan, A., Delquié, P., Larichev, O., Morikawa, T., Polydoropoulou, A., & Rao, V. (1999). Extended Framework for Modeling Choice Behavior. Marketing Letters, 10(3), 187‑203. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008046730291

Lättman, K., Olsson, L. E., & Friman, M. (2018). A new approach to accessibility – Examining perceived accessibility in contrast to objectively measured accessibility in daily travel. Research in Transportation Economics, 69, 501‑511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.retrec.2018.06.002

Mattioli, G. (2016). Transport needs in a climate-constrained world. A novel framework to reconcile social and environmental sustainability in transport. Energy Research & Social Science, 18, 118‑128. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2016.03.025

Tiznado-Aitken, I., Vecchio, G., Guzman, L.A., Arellana, J., Humberto, M., Vasconcellos, E., Muñoz, J.C., (2023). Unequal periurban mobility: Travel patterns, modal choices and urban core dependence in Latin America. Habitat International 133, 102752. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.habitatint.2023.102752