Urban form, road network type, and mode choice for frequently conducted activities: a multilevel analysis using quasi-experimental design data

The question of whether characteristics of urban form influence travel behaviour has a long tradition in transportation and urban planning. Positive evidence has been found, however, that serious methodological objections can be raised against many of these studies. Often no explicit attempt was made to disentangle the effects of spatial characteristics against personal and household characteristics. In addition, if both kinds of variables were included in the analysis, researchers were often not aware of the specific statistical problems that relate to the fact that the observations are made at different levels of aggregation. In this paper, therefore, the authors adopt a multilevel analysis to examine the relationship between urban form and travel behaviour.