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Does the Urban Structure Mobility? A quantitative study of the effects of car ownership, and residential and destination locations on travel behaviour in Greater Oslo Torstein S. Throndsen Master thesis in Human Geography at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography UNIVERSITY OF OSLO 26/5-17 II © Torstein S. Throndsen 2017 Does the Urban Structure Mobility? A quantitative study of the effects of car ownership, and residential and destination locations on travel behaviour in Greater Oslo Torstein S. Throndsen http://www.duo.uio.no/ Print: CopyCat I Abstract This master thesis investigates how urban structures influence travel behaviour in the city region of Oslo and Akershus. Global climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. In search for ways to mitigate CO2 emissions, policymakers have turned their eyes to the transport sector. It is often conceived that polycentric city regions with compact, transit- oriented cities and neighbourhoods reduce distances travelled, discourage car use and promote the use of alternative transport modes. Multivariate quantitative models are applied in this thesis to address specifically three shortcomings in the assumed causality between urban structures and travel behaviour. First, car ownership usually overshadows the effect of all other factors on travel behaviour. The findings in this thesis indicate, however, that car ownership function as a mediator between urban structures and travel behaviour. Second, the influence of trip destination locations on travel behaviour is understudied, particularly in a Nordic context. In this thesis, the urban structures at trip destination locations, especially workplace density, turn out to have a major impact on transport mode choice. Third, few Nordic studies, and none of them Norwegian, have taken into account the street design in the local neighbourhoods. Moreover, diversity measures, such as the degree of mixed building or land use, have not been popular in Nordic studies. The findings in this thesis indicate that future studies should take diversity and design elements into consideration. II Preface Writing this master thesis has been like a trip. And just as I argue in this thesis that a number of factors influence how people make their trips, this trip has been influenced by many factors. Some of those factors are people that I would like to thank for their contribution. Most of all I would like to thank my supervisor, Lars Böcker. I have learnt so much, thanks to you. It has been a true joy and a privilege to have you as my supervisor. Thank you. I would also like to thank my co-supervisor, Per Gunnar Røe. Your contribution in especially the final weeks is greatly appreciated. I would also like to thank Tanu Priya Uteng at the Institute of Transport Economics. You have given me so many opportunities which I could not have dreamt about one year ago. I would like to thank my fellow master students. I will miss the quizzes. I am also very grateful to Osloforskning for the grant I received. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Katrina. Your patience these last months of my master degree has been nothing less but absolutely marvellous. I am also grateful that you proofread this thesis. However, all misspellings and all other kind of errors in this thesis are mine to blame. I would also like to thank the rest of my family and my parents, who have made me believe in myself. This master thesis is part of the research project Smart Mobility Suburbs (SMS), which is funded by the Norwegian Research Council’s ENERGIX program. The project focuses on innovations in mobility practices, and innovations in collaborative and multi-scalar governance to enable low-energy smart cities/micro-cities. SMS is a collaboration between the UIO-CIENS partners the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research (NIBR), and Institute of Transport Economics (TØI). III List of Content 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 1 2 Theory ................................................................................................................................ 6 2.1 How to Understand Mobility ....................................................................................... 7 2.2 Urban regional land uses and infrastructures ............................................................ 10 2.2.1 Neighbourhoods and the five Ds ........................................................................ 11 2.2.2 What about the destination location? ................................................................. 20 2.3 Socioeconomic and demographic attributes .............................................................. 22 2.3.1 The role of car ownership ................................................................................... 22 2.3.2 Self-selection and car ownership ........................................................................ 24 2.4 Literature summarised ............................................................................................... 25 3 Research Design ............................................................................................................... 27 3.1 Study area .................................................................................................................. 29 3.1.1 Oslo and Akershus ............................................................................................. 29 3.2 Data ............................................................................................................................ 34 3.2.1 Validity and reliability ....................................................................................... 35 3.2.2 Sample ................................................................................................................ 36 3.2.3 Representativeness ............................................................................................. 38 3.2.4 Travel behaviour variables ................................................................................. 38 3.2.5 Car ownership variables ..................................................................................... 39 3.2.6 Land use variables .............................................................................................. 40 3.2.7 Control variables ................................................................................................ 49 3.3 Models ....................................................................................................................... 52 3.3.1 Car ownership: Logit .......................................................................................... 52 3.3.2 Transport mode: Multinomial logit model ......................................................... 54 3.3.3 Direct and indirect effects: Structural Equation Modelling ............................... 55 3.3.4 Total distance travelled by car: Tobit ................................................................. 57 3.3.5 Sensitivity analyses ............................................................................................ 58 4 Descriptive results ............................................................................................................ 61 4.1 How to read the maps ................................................................................................ 61 4.2 Travel patterns ........................................................................................................... 63 4.2.1 Total distance travelled by car ........................................................................... 63 4.2.2 Modal split .......................................................................................................... 65 4.2.3 Residential location ............................................................................................ 66 4.2.4 Destination location ............................................................................................ 70 IV 4.3 Urban structures and modal split ............................................................................... 74 4.3.1 Residential urban structures ............................................................................... 74 4.3.2 Destination urban structures ............................................................................... 76 4.4 Social characteristics and modal split ........................................................................ 77 4.5 Car ownership and modal split .................................................................................. 79 4.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 81 5 Analysis I: Transport mode choice (and distances) by urban structures of residence and destination ................................................................................................................................ 83 5.1 Total car distance by residential urban structures ..................................................... 84 5.2 Transport mode choice (and distances) by urban structures of residence and destination ............................................................................................................................ 86 5.2.1 Effect of socioeconomic and demographic attributes ........................................ 88 5.2.2 Effect of residential urban