The choice of park & ride facilities : an analysis using a context-dependent hierarchical choice experiment

Park and Ride facilities have been proposed in several countries to alleviate the accessibility problems in cities. Despite growing accessibility problems, these facilities do not seem to attract the expected number of car drivers and are under-used. In an attempt to measure consumer evaluations of the attributes of Park and Ride facilities, a stated choice experiment, based on the method of hierarchical information integration, was conducted in the city of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. This paper documents the major results of this study, which differs from previous research in that a large range of attributes is examined, including accessibility of the facility, the quality of the facility, and the features of additional transport. In addition, context variables affect the decision- making process of car drivers such as weather, having luggage and travel purpose were incorporated in the study design. The results indicate that safety, quality of the public transport and relative travel times by transport modes are key attributes to the success of P&R facilities. Contextual variables seem to have only a minor impact.