The study presented in this paper uses Stated Preferences (SP) data on mode choice collected as
part of a recent
survey on long distance travel u
n
dertaken in three European countries. The purpose of this article is twofold. It aims at
exploring the impacts of the choic
e of mixing probability distri
butions while accounting for unobserved taste
heter
ogeneity and it aims at focusing on the derived estimation of the distribu
tions of values of travel time
savings
(VTTS).
We compare eleven distributions, each having particular properties in terms of domain, location, scale, and shape.
Due to the repetiti
ve nature of the SP experiments, we estimate mixtures of Multinomial Logit (MNL) models for panel
data.
The results show that the mixing distributions differ from one country to another, suggesting existence of European
disparities as it regards long
-
dista
nce mode choice. The results also show that long
-
distance travellers pay a lot more
attention to access and egress travel times to and from the main mode than to total travel time with the main mode.
