Children's school commuting in the Netherlands: Does it matter how urban form is incorporated in mode choice models?

Figures & data

Figure 1. Locations of the study areas.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics.

	Walking (n = 400)	Cycling (n = 170)	Motorized (n = 53)	p-Value
Personal characteristics
Age (median [IQR])	10.00 [8.00, 10.00]	9.00 [8.00, 10.00]	7.00 [6.00, 9.00]	<0.001
Sex (0 = female, 1 = male) (%)	262/138 (65.5/34.5)	94/76 (55.3/44.7)	21/32 (39.6/60.4)	<0.001
BMI (0 = normal weight, 1 = overweighted) (%)	132 (33.0)	41 (24.1)	6 (11.3)	0.001
Trip characteristics
Direction (0 = home–school, 1 = school–home	184/216 (46.0/54.0)	95/75 (55.9/44.1)	28/25 (52.8/47.2)	0.084
Distance in meters (logged) (median [IQR])	5.36 [3.51, 5.90]	5.79 [5.49, 6.45]	6.81 [6.47, 7.06]	<0.001
Traffic safety
Major roads (median [IQR])	0.00 [0.00, 0.01]	0.00 [0.00, 0.01]	0.00 [0.00, 0.12]	0.001
Cycle path (median [IQR])	0.76 [0.02, 9.69]	2.33 [0.11, 24.90]	1.06 [0.00, 10.80]	0.005
Accident risk (median [IQR])	0.09 [0.08, 0.20]	0.12 [0.09, 0.24]	0.23 [0.07, 0.26]	<0.001
Urban form
Cul-de-sac (median [IQR])	2.83 [0.00, 7.01]	5.49 [2.44, 8.36]	7.10 [2.55, 10.20]	<0.001
3-way crossings (median [IQR])	31.05 [20.80, 35.20]	29.55 [22.10, 34.85]	34.00 [26.50, 36.30]	0.128
4-way crossings (median [IQR])	4.79 [3.81, 7.72]	6.65 [3.59, 9.71]	5.25 [2.68, 8.04]	0.032
>4-way crossings (median [IQR])	0.15 [0.00, 1.37]	0.00 [0.00, 0.77]	0.00 [0.00, 0.91]	0.001
Land-use diversity (median [IQR])	0.04 [0.02, 0.13]	0.13 [0.04, 0.19]	0.15 [0.05, 0.18]	<0.001
Building diversity (median [IQR])	0.13 [0.04, 0.20]	0.16 [0.12, 0.25]	0.14 [0.12, 0.17]	<0.001
Roughness index (median [IQR])	0.14 [0.11, 0.19]	0.18 [0.12, 0.26]	0.25 [0.22, 0.32]	<0.001
Closeness index (median [IQR])	60.80 [53.70, 67.88]	67.75 [62.00, 72.00]	74.70 [70.90, 78.40]	<0.001
Betweenness index (median [IQR])	24.20 [16.20, 27.20]	22.15 [13.93, 26.28]	15.40 [13.80, 17.50]	<0.001
Street density (median [IQR])	106.00 [87.90, 120.00]	114.50 [91.25, 127.75]	116.00 [105.00, 125.00]	0.001

IQR, interquartile range.

p-values are based on the Kruskal–Wallis test (continuous variables) or the Fisher test (categorical variables).

Table 2. Results of the univariate multinomial mixed models.

	Walking		Cycling
	Coef.	p-Value	Coef.	p-Value	AIC
Personal characteristics
Age	0.408	0.023^*	0.342	0.076^#	798.143
Sex	−0.939	0.062^#	−0.826	0.115	794.064
BMI (n.s.)	0.876	0.149	0.377	0.553	797.606
Trip characteristics
Direction (n.s.)	0.515	0.134	−0.052	0.886	791.707
Distance (logged)	−0.853	0.000^***	−1.017	0.000^***	780.841
Traffic safety
Major roads	−10.551	0.001^**	−9.038	0.016^*	791.059
Cycle path (n.s.)	−0.008	0.671	−0.009	0.620	798.088
Accident risk (n.s.)	0.365	0.827	0.475	0.784	797.961
Urban form
Cul-de-sac (n.s.)	0.011	0.811	−0.016	0.730	798.183
3-way crossings	−0.073	0.012^*	−0.062	0.044^*	794.852
4-way crossings (n.s.)	0.046	0.497	0.072	0.313	798.702
>4-way crossings	0.226	0.241	0.475	0.019^*	794.067
Land-use diversity	−11.604	0.000^***	−8.305	0.009^**	786.933
Building diversity (n.s.)	2.566	0.611	0.314	0.951	797.748
Roughness index	−8.920	0.000^***	−9.320	0.000^***	777.661
Closeness index	−0.121	0.000^***	−0.116	0.000^***	779.031
Betweenness index	0.093	0.035^*	0.146	0.001^**	793.299
Street density	−0.038	0.000^***	−0.029	0.012^*	792.459

Being chauffeured served as reference category.

n.s. refers to non-significant variables.

AIC, Akaike information criterion.

*** Signif. codes: <0.001 ‘***’

, <0.01 ‘

** ’, <0.05 ‘

* ’, <0.1 ‘

^# ’.

Figure 2. PCA results (left: screeplot, right: bi-plot).

Table 3. Results of the multinomial mixed models.

	Model 1 (Base model)				Model 2 (Individual effects)				Model 3 (First principal component)
	Walking		Cycling		Walking		Cycling		Walking		Cycling
	Coef.	p-Value	Coef.	p-Value	Coef.	p-Value	Coef.	p-Value	Coef.	p-Value	Coef.	p-Value
Intercept	3.321	0.080^*	4.154	0.063^*	6.049	0.018^*	6.343	0.040^*	2.781	0.173	3.837	0.105
Personal characteristics
Age	0.441	0.009 ^**	0.394	0.052^*	0.520	0.005 ^**	0.391	0.093^*	0.402	0.023^*	0.397	0.056^*
Sex	−0.769	0.111	−0.712	0.192	−0.881	0.091^*	−0.767	0.191	−0.772	0.115	−0.750	0.175
Trip characteristics
Distance (logged)	−0.694	0.000^***	−0.905	0.000^***	0.394	0.328	−0.152	0.733	−0.524	0.013^*	−0.841	0.001^***
Traffic safety
Major roads	−4.385	0.227	−1.531	0.738	5.354	0.286	4.923	0.426	−5.834	0.113	−1.998	0.668
Urban form
3-way crossings					−0.094	0.064^*	−0.092	0.120
>4-way crossings					−0.586	0.023^*	−0.173	0.559
Land-use diversity					−11.970	0.021^*	0.428	0.945
Roughness index					3.210	0.388	0.294	0.948
Closeness index					−0.102	0.034^*	−0.102	0.071^*
Betweenness index					0.183	0.001^**	0.128	0.070^*
Street density					−0.027	0.189	0.004	0.860
Principal comp. 1									0.453	0.024^*	0.240	0.264
AIC	781.513				775.117				778.125
	Model 4 (Principal component 1−3)				Model 5 (Composite measure)
Intercept	−0.662	0.799	2.125	0.479	3.382	0.086^*	4.174	0.068^*
Personal characteristics
Age	0.321	0.089^*	0.233	0.311	0.394	0.026^*	0.375	0.069^*
Sex	−0.669	0.194	−0.607	0.293	−0.731	0.136	−0.704	0.202
Trip characteristics
Distance (logged)	0.224	0.537	−0.278	0.496	−0.635	0.002^**	−0.882	0.000^***
Traffic safety
Major roads	2.805	0.585	6.235	0.294	−4.484	0.176	−1.538	0.733
Urban form
Principal comp. 1	0.571	0.009^**	0.373	0.107
Principal comp. 2	0.830	0.015^*	0.691	0.067^*
Principal comp. 3	−0.195	0.434	0.204	0.470
Composite measure					−0.060	0.096^*	−0.039	0.331
AIC	770.707				780.885

Being chauffeured served as reference category.

AIC, Akaike information criterion.

*** Signif. codes: <0.001 ‘***’

** , <0.01 ‘**

* ’, <0.05 ‘*

* ’, <0.1 ‘^#’.