The Response of Urban Travel Mode Choice to Parking Fees considering Travel Time Variability

Abstract

Increasing automobile use leads to higher costs for traveling associated with emissions, congestion, noise, and other impacts. One option to address this is to introduce high parking charges to reduce the demand for automobile use and encourage the travel mode switch to public transport. To estimate commuters’ mode choice behavior in response to high parking fees, commuters from Nanjing completed an individually customized discrete choice survey in which they chose between driving and taking the bus or metro when choices varied in terms of time and cost attributes. Multinomial logit models were used to estimate commuters’ responses to high parking charges. In the models, the variability of travel times is considered and analyzed in the stated mode choice models. The results suggest that increases in costs of driving will lead to a great reduction in driving demand. The travel time reliability ratio is 0.50 and the value of each minute late is almost 5.0 times more than the average travel time with the restriction of the maximum allowed delays. The methods used in this study could be adopted to estimate the effect of variable pricing strategies on mode choice responses for different trip purposes. The high value given to travel time variability has implications for transport policy in terms of decision making with respect to new pricing strategies. Moreover, the valuation of travel time savings taken into account in this study would be helpful to better understand the effect of high parking fees.