How does apartment living shape public transport travel? Insights from interviews with apartment residents in Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

Apartment housing, as part of compact city policies, has been promoted to encourage greater public transport use. While the determinants of public transport use are well documented, less attention has been given to how these determinants are encountered, internalised, and responded to within specific residential contexts. This research addresses that gap by exploring how apartment residents in Melbourne rationalise their public transport travel decisions. Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews analysed thematically, five themes were identified. Residential self-selection emerged as a contextual theme, revealing that apartment choice was driven by transport-related preferences and structural constraints such as affordability. Three themes then captured how residents encounter and respond to these determinants: the built environment shaped access and walking conditions; practical service factors including cost, frequency, reliability, and connectivity were evaluated through comparative cost-benefit reasoning; and subjective experiences of safety, crowding, and comfort were highly individual and context-dependent. A fifth theme (pragmatism and necessity) revealed that attitudes evolve through accumulated experience, exposure, and structural limitations rather than deliberate preference formation. These findings contribute to the travel behaviour literature by introducing rationalisation as an ongoing mechanism within the attitude-behaviour-context framework, showing that even where access to public transport is good and residential self-selection is present, attitudes and behaviours remain heterogeneous and shaped by life circumstances, structural constraints, and accumulated experience.