Moving from monomodality to multimodality? Changes in mode choice of new residents

This paper analyses the interdependences between modal variability as part of everyday mobility and residential relocations. Accordingly, the main research question to what extent the combination of travel modes changes after moving to another city. In discussing this, the paper is based on two conceptual assumptions. First, residential relocations are understood as biographical transitions within a mobility biography. Second, in recent years there has been a trend towards multimodal transport systems, especially in big cities, comprising both the supply and demand of urban transport. We believe that this tendency towards multimodality varies by the overall mobility culture of a particular city, which is expressed, for example, by its car dependence or cycling-friendliness. Combining these findings we believe that people who move between cities representing different mobility cultures are likely to change their use and combination of travel modes. Empirically, this assumption is scrutinized by surveying people who recently moved between the German cities of Bremen, Hamburg and the Ruhr area and showed a monomodal mode choice before the relocation (N = 449). One central finding of this study is that people who moved to a public transport or cycling-friendly city are more likely to become multimodal than the ones who moved to auto-oriented cities.