Promoting sustainable travel modes for commute tours: A comparison of the effects of home and work locations and employer-provided incentives

By using data from the 2011 Oregon Household Activity Survey, conducted in the Portland, OR, metropolitan area, the authors conduct tour-based analyses of commute mode choice and apply them to evaluate and compare the effects of three sets of variables: the built environment at home, the built environment at workplace, and employer-provided financial incentives. The analysis results suggested that compared to the built environment at home, the built environment at workplace showed more additional explanatory power, illustrating the importance of including work-location-related variables in the models that simulate commute mode choice and trip chaining. Furthermore, we found that employer-provided financial incentives, in particular, parking fees at workplaces and the provision of subsidized transit passes, could also be very efficient policy levers to encourage commuters to use more sustainable commute modes, especially public transit. While the model results clearly show that the effects of many variables vary by tour complexity, we did not find strong evidence to the hypothesis that trip chaining creates a barrier to shifting commuters' travel mode from auto to nonauto modes.