An agent-based model of modal choice with perception biases and habits

To adapt cities to the issues of climate change and public health, urban policies are trying to encourage soft mobility [14] in order to reduce traffic and pollution, via financial incentives or new infrastructure. However, mobility evolves very slowly, and the share of the car remains significant (74% in France [9]), despite increased public awareness of global warming, and increased concern for ecology. The pandemic offered an opportunity to explore the impact of reduced car mobility and new urban planning policies, for instance with temporary cycle paths [19]. But these public policies normally take longer to implement and are not always well accepted by the car-loving population; many of these temporary cycle paths were gradually returned to cars after the end of the lockdowns [6]. Many explaining factors of this inertia of mobility and reluctance to shift from the car are already known, both contextual, such as a lack of alternatives (limited public transportation options), individual constraints (transporting children or tools), or higher costs of newer or electric vehicles...); and psychological, such as the difficulty to change habits [8, 17], individualism [12], or influence of cognitive biases [15, 13].