MOBILITY STYLES AND ACCESSIBILITY IN NORTHERN ITALY: A FOCUS ON THE CITY OF TORINO

The paper, through the analysis of the relationships between residential location, mobility styles, and accessibility, aims at defining a set of travellers’ typologies based on perception of accessibility to urban services. In the city of Torino a survey was conducted on a sample of 699 households, including at least one under 16 child, and stratified according to the residential location (city centre, suburbs, and outer city). The goal was to investigate two main issues: a) mobility, travel behaviour (through a travel diary), and car availability and ownership; b) opinions about the accessibility to the work location and to the urban services. All the household characteristics, as well as socio-economical data and user behaviours were researched and analysed through the Exploratory Factor Analysis to find out the latent factors on which clustering the sample. The results show three travellers’ profiles differentiated by household size and accessibility perception. One group, formed by the largest families, spread over the three areas, shows lower travel-to-work times and mobility time budget but is unsatisfied in terms of accessibility to services and work. The cluster formed by medium-size families living in the suburbs is highly satisfied with accessibility to urban services. The last cluster is made up by the smallest households living in the outer city, declaring average scores of accessibility, even though showing the highest times to get to work. The results highlight the importance of the household composition and its socio-economical status, which induce different mobility patterns and accessibility perception. This allows decision-makers to define transport policies aimed at encouraging a more sustainable transport through tailored actions, information campaigns, and incentives targeted on the users attitudes and sensitivities.