What drives sustainable student travel? Mode choice determinants in the Greater Toronto Area.

Examination of mode choice behavior is an important step in accurately predicting future travel demand. Despite having somewhat unique travel needs and challenges, there is a lack of knowledge in understanding the mode use behavior of university student population. The existing studies on university populations relied on a relatively smaller sample in investigating the behavior. Therefore, using world's largest university student's travel database, this study examines the factors affecting the mode choice behavior of a diverse university student population with student samples from four universities and their seven campuses located across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Canada. Additionally, stratifying this diverse population using their attitudinal responses towards numerous travel modes, this study also estimates three additional mode choice models to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of how students in different markets, with different latent attitudes towards transportation, vary in terms of sustainable mode choice. A cluster analysis based on fourteen attitudinal responses, was conducted to stratify the sample whereas the popular multinomial logit approach was used to estimate the mode choice models. This study finds transit pass and bike ownership as important determinants that govern sustainable mode choice among the students in the region. The findings of this study could facilitate the sustainability offices at the four universities in making an informed policy decision in shifting the mode use behavior of students towards sustainable modes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]