IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/transp/v46y2019i4d10.1007_s11116-017-9810-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does a high level of multimodality mean less car use? An exploration of multimodality trends in England

Author

Listed:
  • Eva Heinen

    (University of Leeds)

  • Giulio Mattioli

    (University of Leeds
    University of Leeds)

Abstract

Some existing studies have suggested that a higher level of multimodality—the use of more than one transport mode within a given period of time—may be desirable to achieve societies less dependent on cars. The aim of this study was to investigate the trends in individual multimodality in England. In addition, we explored whether these trends were homogenous, i.e. similar between socio-economic characteristics, and whether changes in multimodality corresponded with changes in car use and the use of other transport modes. Our analyses showed that in contrast to reported trends in existing research, the level of multimodality in England decreased between 1995 and 2015. These trends stratified by income were diverging, which may imply that inequality in transport opportunities may be increasing. In contrast, the trends for age and gender were converging. In addition, we found that the car mode share remained fairly stable and absolute car use decreased since 2004, whilst multimodality decreased. This suggests that there is no necessary relationship between aggregate levels of car use and the average individual level of multimodality. Moreover, our analyses showed that these trends were very similarly independent of which indicator was applied. This indicates that for analysing trends in multimodality, the choice of indicator may not be that important, and indicators that are elementary to calculate and easy to interpret, e.g. number of modes used, highlight trends that are highly consistent with more sophisticated metrics. This paper finishes with a discussion of the implications of these findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Eva Heinen & Giulio Mattioli, 2019. "Does a high level of multimodality mean less car use? An exploration of multimodality trends in England," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(4), pages 1093-1126, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:transp:v:46:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s11116-017-9810-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11116-017-9810-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11116-017-9810-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11116-017-9810-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frändberg, Lotta & Vilhelmson, Bertil, 2011. "More or less travel: personal mobility trends in the Swedish population focusing gender and cohort," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 1235-1244.
    2. Bastian, Anne & Börjesson, Maria & Eliasson, Jonas, 2016. "Explaining “peak car” with economic variables," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 236-250.
    3. Scheiner, Joachim & Chatterjee, Kiron & Heinen, Eva, 2016. "Key events and multimodality: A life course approach," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 148-165.
    4. Noreen C. McDonald, 2015. "Are Millennials Really the "Go-Nowhere" Generation?," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 81(2), pages 90-103, April.
    5. Alexa Delbosc & Graham Currie, 2013. "Causes of Youth Licensing Decline: A Synthesis of Evidence," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(3), pages 271-290, May.
    6. Heinen, Eva & Chatterjee, Kiron, 2015. "The same mode again? An exploration of mode choice variability in Great Britain using the National Travel Survey," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 266-282.
    7. Molin, Eric & Mokhtarian, Patricia & Kroesen, Maarten, 2016. "Multimodal travel groups and attitudes: A latent class cluster analysis of Dutch travelers," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 14-29.
    8. Papke, Leslie E & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M, 1996. "Econometric Methods for Fractional Response Variables with an Application to 401(K) Plan Participation Rates," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 11(6), pages 619-632, Nov.-Dec..
    9. Lucas, Karen & Bates, John & Moore, José & Carrasco, Juan Antonio, 2016. "Modelling the relationship between travel behaviours and social disadvantage," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 85(C), pages 157-173.
    10. Ralph Buehler & Andrea Hamre, 2015. "The multimodal majority? Driving, walking, cycling, and public transportation use among American adults," Transportation, Springer, vol. 42(6), pages 1081-1101, November.
    11. Olafsson, Anton Stahl & Nielsen, Thomas Sick & Carstensen, Trine Agervig, 2016. "Cycling in multimodal transport behaviours: Exploring modality styles in the Danish population," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 123-130.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Timmer, Sebastian & Merfeld, Katrin & Henkel, Sven, 2023. "Exploring motivations for multimodal commuting: A hierarchical means-end chain analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    2. Goletz, Mirko & Haustein, Sonja & Wolking, Christina & L’Hostis, Alain, 2020. "Intermodality in European metropolises: The current state of the art, and the results of an expert survey covering Berlin, Copenhagen, Hamburg and Paris," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 109-122.
    3. Fu, Xingxing & van Lierop, Dea & Ettema, Dick, 2024. "Is multimodality advantageous? Assessing the relationship between multimodality and perceived transport adequacy and accessibility in different travel contexts," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    4. Haustein, Sonja & Kroesen, Maarten, 2022. "Shifting to more sustainable mobility styles: A latent transition approach," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    5. Faber, R.M. & Jonkeren, O. & de Haas, M.C. & Molin, E.J.E. & Kroesen, M., 2022. "Inferring modality styles by revealing mode choice heterogeneity in response to weather conditions," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 282-295.
    6. Choi, Yunkyung & Guhathakurta, Subhrajit, 2024. "Unraveling the diversity in transit-oriented development," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    7. Timmer, Sebastian & Bösehans, Gustav & Henkel, Sven, 2023. "Behavioural norms or personal gains? – An empirical analysis of commuters‘ intention to switch to multimodal mobility behaviour," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    8. Crawford, Fiona, 2020. "Segmenting travellers based on day-to-day variability in work-related travel behaviour," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Groth, Sören, 2019. "Multimodal divide: Reproduction of transport poverty in smart mobility trends," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 56-71.
    2. Lixun Liu & Yujiang Wang & Robin Hickman, 2023. "How Rail Transit Makes a Difference in People’s Multimodal Travel Behaviours: An Analysis with the XGBoost Method," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-23, March.
    3. Klinger, Thomas, 2017. "Moving from monomodality to multimodality? Changes in mode choice of new residents," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 221-237.
    4. Timmer, Sebastian & Merfeld, Katrin & Henkel, Sven, 2023. "Exploring motivations for multimodal commuting: A hierarchical means-end chain analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    5. Rico Krueger & Akshay Vij & Taha H. Rashidi, 2018. "Normative beliefs and modality styles: a latent class and latent variable model of travel behaviour," Transportation, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 789-825, May.
    6. Milad Mehdizadeh & Alireza Ermagun, 2020. "“I’ll never stop driving my child to school”: on multimodal and monomodal car users," Transportation, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 1071-1102, June.
    7. Fu, Xingxing & van Lierop, Dea & Ettema, Dick, 2024. "Is multimodality advantageous? Assessing the relationship between multimodality and perceived transport adequacy and accessibility in different travel contexts," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 179(C).
    8. Oostendorp, Rebekka & Gebhardt, Laura, 2018. "Combining means of transport as a users' strategy to optimize traveling in an urban context: empirical results on intermodal travel behavior from a survey in Berlin," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 72-83.
    9. Mehdizadeh, Milad & Zavareh, Mohsen Fallah & Nordfjaern, Trond, 2019. "Mono- and multimodal green transport use on university trips during winter and summer: Hybrid choice models on the norm-activation theory," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 317-332.
    10. Yongsung Lee & Giovanni Circella & Patricia L. Mokhtarian & Subhrajit Guhathakurta, 2020. "Are millennials more multimodal? A latent-class cluster analysis with attitudes and preferences among millennial and Generation X commuters in California," Transportation, Springer, vol. 47(5), pages 2505-2528, October.
    11. Timmer, Sebastian & Bösehans, Gustav & Henkel, Sven, 2023. "Behavioural norms or personal gains? – An empirical analysis of commuters‘ intention to switch to multimodal mobility behaviour," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    12. Choi, Yunkyung & Guhathakurta, Subhrajit, 2024. "Unraveling the diversity in transit-oriented development," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    13. Scheiner, Joachim & Chatterjee, Kiron & Heinen, Eva, 2016. "Key events and multimodality: A life course approach," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 148-165.
    14. De Vos, Jonas & Alemi, Farzad, 2020. "Are young adults car-loving urbanites? Comparing young and older adults’ residential location choice, travel behavior and attitudes," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 986-998.
    15. Melia, Steve & Chatterjee, Kiron & Stokes, Gordon, 2018. "Is the urbanisation of young adults reducing their driving?," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 444-456.
    16. Nash, Sean & Mitra, Raktim, 2019. "University students' transportation patterns, and the role of neighbourhood types and attitudes," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 200-211.
    17. Meng Zhou & Donggen Wang, 2019. "Investigating inter-generational changes in activity-travel behavior: a disaggregate approach," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(5), pages 1643-1687, October.
    18. Vij, Akshay & Gorripaty, Sreeta & Walker, Joan L., 2017. "From trend spotting to trend ’splaining: Understanding modal preference shifts in the San Francisco Bay Area," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 238-258.
    19. Faber, R.M. & Jonkeren, O. & de Haas, M.C. & Molin, E.J.E. & Kroesen, M., 2022. "Inferring modality styles by revealing mode choice heterogeneity in response to weather conditions," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 282-295.
    20. Wang, Xize, 2019. "Has the relationship between urban and suburban automobile travel changed across generations? Comparing Millennials and Generation Xers in the United States," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 107-122.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:transp:v:46:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s11116-017-9810-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.