City-periphery residents' travel mode captivity: Case study of a large-scale residential area in Shanghai, China

Chinese big cities are reforming the old downtown and substandard housings are being demolished. The government relocates residents to large-scale residential areas on the city periphery, where residents often find transport service unsatisfactory but still use transit for their most frequent trips. Very few studies have focused on suppressed travel, especially suppressed travel mode choice in this kind of area. To understand the travel mode choice suppression and provide policy suggestions for the area, this study conducts a survey in Jinhexincheng, describes the travel mode choice condition, estimates an integrated mode choice and latent variable model, analyzes transit satisfaction scores, and provides transit improvement suggestions. Results show 41 percent of the resident samples use transit for their most frequent trips, but only 18.55 percent find transit service quality satisfactory. 71.77 percent of the transit rider samples acknowledge that they "have no other choices and must travel by transit." The integrated choice and latent variable model indicates that the "must travel by transit" feeling (significant latent variable) has a negative effect on transit mode choice. The retired tends to have less of this feeling. Transit satisfaction scores show that "car crowdedness during peak hours" and "most-frequent trip's travel time" is the most unsatisfactory aspects of the transit service. They should be improved first to prevent "must travel by transit" riders from giving up transit. This supports transit decision-making in developing countries' similar areas.