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

Park and ride (P & R) 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 underused. In an attempt to measure consumer evaluations of the attributes of P & R 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 connecting transport. In addition, context variables affect the decisionmaking process of car drivers such as weather, having heavy luggage and travel purpose were incorporated in the study design. The results indicate that social safety, quality of the connecting 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.