Walking and bicycle catchment areas of tram stops: factors and insights

Pollution and congestion are important issues in urban mobility. These can potentially be solved by multimodal transport, such as the bicycle-transit combination, which benefits from the flexible aspect of the bicycle and the wider spatial range of public transport. In addition, the bicycle can increase the catchment areas of public transport stops. Most transit operators consider a fixed 400m buffer catchment area. Currently, not much is known about what influences the size of catchment areas, especially for the bicycle as a feeder mode. Bicycles allow for reaching a further stop in order to avoid a transfer, but it is not clear whether travelers actually do this. This paper aims to fill this knowledge gap by assessing which factors affect feeder distance and feeder mode choice. Data are collected by an on-board transit revealed preference survey among tram travelers in The Hague, The Netherlands. Both regression models and a qualitative analysis are performed to identify the factors that influence feeder distance and feeder mode choice. Results show that the median walking feeder distance is 380m, and the median cycling feeder distance is 1025m. The tram stop density and chosen feeder mode are most important in feeder distance. For feeder mode choice, the following factors are found to be influential: tram stop density, availability of a bicycle, and frequency of cycling of the tram passenger. Furthermore, the motives of respondents for choosing a stop further away are mostly related to the quality of the transit service and comfort matters, of which avoiding a transfer is named most often. In contrast, the motives for cycling relate mostly to travel time reduction and the built environment. Three important barriers for the bicycle-tram combination have been discovered: unavailability of a bicycle, insufficient and unsafe bicycle parking places. Infrequent users of the bicycle-tram combination are more inclined to travel further to a stop that suits them better.