University of California Transportation Center

This study continues the examination of a variety of strategies an individual may consider or adopt in response to congestion. It finds further evidence that individuals tend to progress from lower-cost, short-term strategies to higher-cost, longer-term ones as dissatisfaction persists or recurs. There is also a weaker tendency to cycle back to lower-cost strategies, although generally just one tier lower than a previously adopted strategy. Binary logit models of the consideration of each of 15 congestion-response strategies were estimated, as a function of work-, family-, leisure-, and travel-related attitudes, among other explanatory variables ρ2 goodness-of-fit measures for these models ranged from 16 to 75. Analysis of the contribution of commute-related variables to the consideration of each strategy found that contribution to be significant in fewer than half of the cases (seven out of 15 strategies). With only one exception, the strategies for which commute variables were significant fell into the higher-cost tiers. Commute variables never contributed more than 11% of a model’s explanatory power, and generally much less. While other explanatory variables may also be significant for transportation-related reasons, it is clear that individuals adopt and consider the strategies studied here for many reasons other than congestion relief. Further, the transportation-related reasons for considering these strategies may be intertwined in complex ways with non-transportation reason. One implication of these findings is that policies designed to change transportation behavior may be less powerful than expected, because reactions are filtered through a variety of other motivations and constraints. An improved understanding of the response to these policies must acknowledge and incorporate the complexity of the choice situation facing the typical individual in modern society.