From mobility management and multilevel modelling towards modelling mobility and multilevel management

Abstract

Governments worldwide aim to decrease the number of Single Occupant Vehicle (SOV) users to reduce traffic congestion and other transport-related problems. The according policies are often termed Mobility Management (Europe) or Travel/Transportation Demand Management (USA) to stress that the focus is on demand management in stead of infrastructure supply. Policy makers often target the home to work travel and as a consequence, employers and their employer transport plans play a significant role in the Mobility Management debate. However, researchers often pay little attention to the workplace, and the promotion of SOV-alternatives there. The Belgian questionnaire Home To Work Travel now enables us to fill this gap because the acquired database takes as viewpoint the workplace. This dataset contains workplace characteristics like size, economic sector and work regimes. However, also contextual factors influence employee travel behaviour. Multilevel regression models allow to incorporate variables both at the workplace and at higher levels (e.g. municipality; city-region). By modelling these different scales simultaneously, contextual factors can be separated from compositional ones. In other words: the central research question is whether the modal split on a worksite is caused by its location in a given area, or by the workplace characteristics itself? In the present study we sought to expand on the previous research by using multilevel modelling to analyse the modal split and mobility management at workplaces. However, the final aim is the development of effective transport policies based on these analyses. Thereby, a key question is the allocation of the right measure to the right actor (Multilevel Management). Indeed, a myriad of actors on different levels take initiatives which influence travel behaviour, both towards and away from SOV-alternatives. We will focus on employers, which are used as mediating institutions between government and individuals. Nevertheless, the wider institutional framework will be part of the discussion, as the different public and private levels are connected. In short, this paper contributes to the research on mobility management initiatives by focussing on the role of employers and the related workplace level, and making use of multilevel models and a large database.

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