How Sustainable Is People’s Travel to Reach Public Transit Stations to Go to Work? A Machine Learning Approach to Reveal Complex Relationships

Abstract

Several previous studies examined the variables of public-transit-related walking and privately owned vehicles (POVs) to go to work. However, most studies neglect the possible non-linear relationships between these variables and other potential variables. Using the 2017 U.S. National Household Travel Survey, we employ the Bayesian Network algorithm to evaluate the non-linear and interaction impacts of health condition attributes, work trip attributes, work attributes, and individual and household attributes on walking and privately owned vehicles to reach public transit stations to go to work in California. The authors found that the trip time to public transit stations is the most important factor in individuals’ walking decision to reach public transit stations. Additionally, it was found that this factor was mediated by population density. For the POV model, the population density was identified as the most important factor and was mediated by travel time to work. These findings suggest that encouraging individuals to walk to public transit stations to go to work in California may be accomplished by adopting planning practices that support dense urban growth and, as a result, reduce trip times to transit stations.