Who uses transit in the journey to work? Multimodality, equity, and planning implications in México City

Increasing mobility needs in developing countries demand the coordination and development of robust urban transit systems. However, several factors lead to the emergence of fragile and disintegrated systems, where several subsystems work under different schemes of formality. In this context, transit travel tends to be highly multimodal, which at the trip level has been scarcely studied. In this study, the metropolitan geography of the primary forms of Transit Mode Combinations (TMCs) is explored for the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) based on data from the 2017 Household Origin-Destination Survey (HODS17). Transit travel is disaggregated to analyze its multimodality, its link with location, as well as its sociodemographic profiles. The most frequent TMCs are compared regarding average travel distances and speed, and their ridership rates are mapped. A regression model is used to test the socioeconomic and urban form correlates of the TMCs. The results show that transit multimodality has a specific geographical pattern by TMCs. Most Metro users are not those residing close to its stations but those having these stations at their trip destination. Travel by Metro shows a stronger association with decreasing Colectivo ridership than with travel by Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). These findings are discussed based on issues of equity and the emerging debates about the path that transit systems must follow in the developing world.