Factors Associated with Reported Transport Mode Choice in an Intermediate Latin American City: Evidence from an Origin–Destination Survey in Loja, Ecuador

Transport mode choice in intermediate Latin American cities remains insufficiently documented, particularly where mobility surveys contain limited information on alternative-specific transport attributes. This study examined the associations between the reported transport mode choice and the available traveler, trip, temporal, and origin–destination characteristics in Loja, Ecuador. The analysis used 1642 records of respondent-selected daily trips from an origin–destination survey. Because respondents reported up to three transport modes in the chronological order of use, the principal mode was reconstructed using a capacity-based hierarchy rather than assuming that the first reported stage represented the main mode. Multimodality was defined as the presence of at least two distinct valid modes. The hierarchy classified 49.21% of records as public bus, 41.72% as private motorized transport, 6.09% as active and micromobility, and 2.98% as commercial or other motorized transport. The modal category changed for 12.12% of records relative to the first-stage definition, while 37.82% of records were multimodal. The principal multinomial model used a reduced three-category hierarchy-defined outcome and achieved an accuracy of 0.776, macro-F1 of 0.631, and macro balanced accuracy of 0.736. Vehicle ownership showed the largest adjusted association with individual or other motorized transport relative to collective transport (RRR = 16.10; 95% CI: 11.60–22.40), followed by driving license possession (RRR = 3.69; 95% CI: 2.61–5.22). Across 20 repeated Random Forest partitions, the mean accuracy was 0.814, although the recall for active and micromobility remained low at 0.138. The results demonstrate that the outcome definition materially affects the modal shares, coefficient estimates, and predictive performance. Because the trip distance and comparable alternative-specific level-of-service attributes were unavailable, the findings should be interpreted as adjusted associations within the analytical sample rather than causal effects or population-level modal shares.