A New Approach to Understand Modal and Pedestrians Route in Portugal

The present paper aims at examining which factors interfere on the choices people make of modes of transport or path (when walking), take into account four variables groups: geometrics, syntactic, land use and transportation accessibility. For that purpose, an online questionnaire was applied to formulate a Discrete Choice Model in two parts: mode choice and path choice for walking trips. The findings showed that factors such as safety, comfort and urban form contribute significantly to the choice of path. For the choice of car as transport choice, the most determining factors were: weather (rain, strong sun, cloudy) and periods of the day (night), both of which are examples of factors that are not controllable; and economic elements (the presence of paid parking lot) and the displacement time (total displacement time and time of access to the car). For the choice of bicycle, the main factors were the presence of cycle lanes and bicycle parking. Based on these findings, it was possible to conclude that the car is the transport mode with greater natural preference, followed by walking and finally bicycle.