Insights into public transit use in Berlin – The role of autonomy and public transit privacy

The role of public transit (PT) is increasingly important in large cities from the perspective of transport planning as the population in urban areas worldwide is growing continuously. A well-developed PT, working as a mass transport mode, is needed to satisfy peoples’ mobility requirements. Hence, the aim of this study was to investigate factors influencing people to use or not to use PT in Berlin (Germany) in order to derive measures for a more attractive PT. In contrast to other studies we aimed at a holistic approach considering sociodemographic, spatial-structural as well as psychological characteristics of individuals. The research used data that was collected in Berlin applying the innovative survey design of a travel skeleton. Hereby, a total of 600 respondents provided information on their everyday travel behavior and their attitudes towards PT. Based on a factor analysis autonomy and public transit privacy were extracted from the psychological item set as latent variables. Together with sociodemographic and spatial-structural characteristics the latent variables were integrated in an ordered hybrid choice model. We found that particularly autonomy strongly affects the use of PT while public transit privacy plays a minor role in Berlin. ... mehrIn addition, we see that living in high dense urban areas leads to a lower use of PT.