Interactions between Travel Behaviour, Accessibility and Personal Characteristics

This paper explores the impacts of personal characteristics and the spatial structure on travel behaviour, especially mode choice. The spatial structure is described among other things by accessibility measures. The models are estimated using structural equation modelling (SEM). The models are based on the 1992 Upper Austrian travel survey and the Upper Austrian transport model. The results highlight the key roles of car ownership, gender and work status in explaining the observed level and intensity of travel. The most important spatial variable is the number of facilities which can be reached by a household. The municipality based variables and the accessibility measures have rather little explanatory power. The reasons for this low explanatory power are considered. Although the findings in this study indicate that the spatial structure is not a decisive determinant of traffic, the results provide useful hints for possible policy alternatives.