An international comparison of factors influencing modal split: implications for environmental taxation.
Abstract
There are various options in transport regulation, such as taxes, congestion charging, and administrative regulation. To choose efficiently, one has to understand the main factors of transport behavior.
If the fuel price is an important factor, then public policy may use environmental taxes to influence the modal split, otherwise other instruments should be used. Thus it is worth analyzing the importance of the fuel prices for the determination of modal split.
This issue has been investigated using various methods and data sets. In this paper, we try to reap the information content of the Urban Audit and statistically analyze the determinants of the modal split for travel to work.
Although the Urban Audit data quality and reliability preclude a clear answer, our results indicate that the fuel price is among the determinants of the modal split. We show that the prediction power of the fuel price varies across the European regions.