Shifting Car Users To Public Transport: A Utility-Based Approach For Selecting Areas For Feeder Services

The successful transition from private cars to public transport is influenced by multiple factors, including accessibility, reliability, and seamless integration between modes. A promising intervention to address the first-mile gap is the implementation of on-demand feeder services, which can enhance the attractiveness and perceived utility of multimodal public transport trips. To strategically deploy such services, it is critical to identify urban areas where they are most likely to shift car users toward public transport. To support this, we extend our simulation SimFLEX (Simulation Framework for Feeder Location Evaluation) framework that explicitly incorporates private car usage into the mode choice set. This refinement enables a comprehensive comparison between car travel, direct public transport, and integrated trips involving on-demand feeders. Using a nested logit model, we capture hierarchical decision-making of travellers and quantify both the potential mode shift and the added value (utility gain) of introducing feeder services. We apply our method to urban areas in Krakow (Poland), identifying urban areas where feeder services can deliver the greatest impact. A quadrant-based evaluation framework is used to categorise target zones based on their strategic suitability for feeder deployment. Our results reveal that utility gains and car-to-public transport shifts vary across areas, underscoring the need for spatially differentiated strategies. This research provides a robust, data-driven tool for planners to prioritise investments in feeder services where they are most likely to reduce car dependency and improve multimodal network performance.