Trip chain complexity: a comparison among latent classes of daily mobility patterns

This paper studies the relationship between trip chain complexity and daily travel behaviour of travellers. While trip chain complexity is conventionally investigated between travel modes, our scope is the more aggregated level of a person’s activity-travel pattern. Using data from the Netherlands Mobility Panel, a latent class cluster analysis was performed to group people with similar mode choice behaviour in distinct mobility pattern classes. All trip chains were assigned to both a travel mode and the mobility pattern class of the traveller. Subsequently, differences in trip chain complexity distributions were analysed between travel modes and between mobility pattern classes. Results indicate considerable differences between travel modes, particularly between multimodal and unimodal trip chains, but also between the unimodal travel modes car, bicycle, walking and public transport trip chains. No substantial differences in trip chain complexity were found between mobility pattern classes. Independently of the included travel modes, the distributions of trip chain complexity degrees were similar across mobility pattern classes. This means that personal circumstances such as the number of working hours or household members are not systematically translated into specific mobility patterns.