Students and Public Transport

There is an extensive list of research done on modal split, yet few take into consideration the effect of students. This paper attempts to identify the effect of a student population within a city has on its city’s public transport share in 52 cities across Europe. Using a multilevel model, the 52 cities are nested into 48 NUTS3 regions and 7 countries. The findings of the multilevel model are that: an increase in (i) the share of students, (ii) commuting time, and (iii) population density increases the share of public transport; (iv) an increase in GDP per capita and (v) in area decreases the public transport share; (vi) and lastly there seems to be a differing effect of public transport costs across NUTS3 regions.