Choice of departure station by railway users

摘要

This paper applies a multinomial logit model to the choice of a departure railway station by Dutchrailway passengers. This is a relevant theme since about 50% of Dutch railway passengers do not travelvia the nearest railway station. The passengers’ choices for departure stations are aggregated at the fourdigit postal code area level. We applied three functional forms for the underlying systematic utility of astation, namely a linear effect of attributes, cross effect of distance and frequency of service, and atranslog formulation on distance and frequency of train services. With 3,498 post code areas and 360railway stations our analysis found consistent effect sizes for distance, frequency of service, intercitystatus of the station and the presence of park-and-ride facility on the choice of departure station. Theeffect of distance on the choice of a departure station declines smoothly. The effect of frequency ofservice is relatively small compared to the effect of distance. A frequency of service increase by ahundred trains per day is equivalent to being 600 m closer to the station. The Intercity status of the stationplays the biggest role in the choice of departure station. It has an equivalent effect of a change in 2 kmdistance or about a frequency of service of 300 trains per day. In addition, the presence of park-and-ridefacility in the station poses a sizable effect in the departure station choice. In most cases its effect reachesabout 35% of the intercity status effect.