Determinants of ground transport modal choice in long-distance trips in Spain

Information on the profiles of potential users is a major concern for producers and public agencies in every market. In the case of transport economics, modeling modal choice is a fundamental key for policy makers trying to improve the sustainability of transportation systems. However, existing empirical literature has focused on short- distance travel within urban systems. This paper contributes to the limited number of investigations on mode choice in medium- and long-distance travel. We employ data from the 2007 Spanish National Mobility Survey to shed light on how socioeconomic factors and trip attributes affect the selection of a primary mode of transportation. Our results confirm the impact of sociodemographic and land use variables on travel behavior. We have also tested the impact of a trip attribute not extensively used in the existing literature: stay duration. This attribute is found to be significant in explaining mode choice. A multilevel multinomial logit model accounts for spatial heterogeneity by including information about where an individual makes this travel decision.