Home-end and activity-end preferences for access to and egress from train stations in the Copenhagen region

Increasing public transport use with the aim of improving the sustainability of cities should focus not only on enhancing level and quality of the service offered, but also on understanding determinants of the choice of access and egress modes to and from the railway network. This study analyzes the difference in preferences at the home-end and activity-end for travelers who have chosen train as their main travel mode while investigating the effect of policy variables such as car parking availability, bicycle parking availability and type, and bicycle on train possibility.

Specifically, this study analyzes the choices between five transport modes (i.e., “walk,” “bicycle,” “car driver,” “car passenger,” “bus”) for 2921 home-end and 3658 activity-end trips. Joint mixed logit models are specified and estimated to account for heteroscedasticity and correlation across alternative modes as well as taste heterogeneity across travelers.

Model estimates and pseudo-elasticities uncover the importance of travel time and underline how the improvement of walkability, bikeability, and bus service would contribute significantly to the increase in the probability of choosing sustainable modes to and from train stations. Moreover, model results emphasize the role of bicycle parking in terms of the sheer number of spaces to be increased as well as covered places to be offered at the activity end, de facto giving the possibility to leave a bicycle at that end during the night.

Lastly, model results show that it is a matter of not only time and trip characteristics, but also traveler characteristics, occupation, and purpose.