Household car-ownership in a world of constant change: The continued influence of traditional variables and the rising influence of emerging mobility scenarios

Abstract

Emerging modes (e.g., cargo bikes), mobility solutions (e.g., shared mobility services) and policy measures (e.g., the reduction of public parking spaces) are envisioned to reduce private car-ownership. However, the development of disaggregate car-ownership models dealing with them, which can be integrated with transport simulation systems, is still missing. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap through the development of household car-ownership models, focusing on the cities of Madrid, Regensburg and Leuven. These cities correspond to distinct urban contexts in Europe. Models based on a representative individual as well as based only on household variables are explored, to check whether the latter shows congruence with the former and can achieve good summary statistics with lower data requirements. Furthermore, such models with only household-level variables are also found to be useful in ascertaining the impact of small-scale shared services. The estimation results show the influence of socio-demographic characteristics, mobility patterns, mobility tool ownership, transport supply and urban characteristics. Discussions are included on behavioural and policy insights. For example, cargo bike ownership and the presence of shared services support in car-ownership reduction. Furthermore, public parking spaces have a significant impact on single car-ownership in Madrid, but not on multiple car-ownership. Besides, the contrasting effects found for the mobility rates in Madrid and Regensburg convey the importance of urban design contexts. The contributions from this study enable to estimate the household car-ownership with the consideration of emerging mobility scenarios, and to devise policies to reduce private car-ownership and promote sustainable urban mobility.