An Exploration of the Interdependencies between Trip Chaining Behavior and Travel Mode Choice

The modeling of travel behavior is complicated by the joint and causal relationships among multiple endogenous variables. And it is generally accepted that commute mode choice and the choice of including intermediate activities on a work tour are interrelated. But the nature of the interrelationship is not clear. In order to give an in depth exploration on this, this paper presents a mathematical model to investigate the decision order of trip chaining and travel mode choice. By using household travel survey data from Beijing, China, this paper applies the co-evolutionary approach to capture the interrelationship between travel mode choice and trip chaining. The co-evolutionary approach is combined with two MNL models, one for travel mode choice and the other for trip chaining behavior. The empirical results show that the order of the transport mode and trip chaining decisions varied among commuters. But the pattern that trip chaining drives mode choice is the dominating trend.