Modeling mode choice for park and ride with express buses serving highway bus stops

Abstract Park and Ride systems are typically associated with rail stations or conventional urban Public Transport hubs. In Gleisdorf, Austria, a highway-based bus stop with nearby Park and Ride facilities is being developed to improve regional Public Transport accessibility in a semi-rural commuter corridor. This paper examines the planned system as an exploratory pre-implementation case study and investigates factors influencing the willingness to switch from Private Transport to Public Transport via Park and Ride. An online mobility survey was conducted before construction, and the stated choice experiment was completed by 479 respondents with access to a private car. Binary logit models with respondent-level clustered standard errors were estimated for the full sample and for subsamples within and outside the perceived catchment area of the planned facility. The results identify real-time delay information, annual Public Transport pass ownership, destination-side parking costs and relative travel time conditions as key determinants of switching intentions. Respondents within the perceived catchment area appear more routine-oriented, whereas respondents outside the catchment area evaluate the concept more hypothetically and attribute-based. For implementation, the findings point to three priorities: providing decision-relevant information before the interchange, encouraging trial use among commuters in the perceived catchment area, and avoiding substantial travel time disadvantages for the highway-based bus service during peak periods.