Chalkia E., Bekiaris E., Yannis G., “Transport mode ON: How to set a discrete choice survey to predict commuters’ mode preferences”, Proceedings of the 9th International Congress on Transportation Research, organised by The Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers (HITE) and the Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT/CERTH) (Athens, Greece, 24-25 October 2019).

The commute trip (to work, education, etc.) is generally the most commonly scheduled and realized trip purpose. For the working population, the commuting trip is by far the trip that makes people spend the most miles. Also, commute trips have temporal and geographic regularity. Thus, they stress a lot the transportation network, since they are really concentrated in time (pick hours) and space. On top of this, car ownership is increasing, as more and more people use their cars for every day commuting. Mainly, people who work in capital cities often face the most lengthy journey times to work and some of the most extended delays due to traffic congestion (Eurostat, 2015). Research has revealed that the length of the average EU commute is estimated to be 37.5 minutes per day. The mode of transport used for the commute trip, as well as many other actions humans take in life, demand to some degree making a decision that involves choice.

In this paper, we discuss the commute trip and its trends for the next years. Additionally we describe how we build a Stated Preference Survey, using the Discrete choice model in order to find the most strong predictors regarding the commute trip taking into account both attitudinal attributes, that focus on cognitive determinants of travel mode choice; and situational attributes which are characterized by a focus on travel mode characteristics and socio-demographic factors. We explain the steps that we followed in order to build the survey, as well as the data population. Finally, a short discussion on the tools that will be used for the analysis of the survey takes place. The current work can be used as summative guidance to whoever wants to build a stated preference survey regarding mode choice. The results of the survey will be discussed in future work.