You Can Lead Travelers to the Bus Stop, But You Can’t Make Them Ride

Modality styles are defined as behavioral predispositions characterized by a certain travel mode or set of travel modes that an individual habitually uses. They are reflective of higher-level orientations, or lifestyles, that influence all dimensions of an individual’s travel and activity behavior. This study employs a latent class model that incorporates the influence exerted by individual modality styles on travel mode choice to identify different modality styles within datasets from the Bay Area, United States and Karlsruhe, Germany. Results reveal that only 40% of the sample population in either dataset considers the full range of travel mode alternatives when deciding how to travel, and differences in the composition of the remaining 60% reflect deeper cultural and spatial differences between the two regions. The study finds that travel demand models that ignore the influence of modality styles on travel mode choice can overestimate expected gains from transport policies and infrastructural initiatives seeking to reduce automobile use by a factor as large as two. The study further demonstrates how incremental improvements in the transportation system, unless accompanied by corresponding shifts in individual modality styles, will result in far smaller changes in travel behavior than would be predicted by a traditional travel demand model; what is needed is a dramatic change to the transportation system that forces individuals to reconsider how they travel.