Introduction. The study of passenger’s behavior is crucial to improve theory of urban public transport organization. We compared the different approaches for explaining the motivations choosing of vehicles type and movement routes by passengers from the perspective of institutional theory. We simulated the passenger behavior by agent-based models. Theoretical analysis. Tr ansport behavior as a concept is fundamentally different from the commonly used concept of “transport mobility”, because ‘transport behavior’ is an integral characteristic of passengers’ motivation for using urban public transport. The analysis with institutional approach shown that the choice of transport mode and route of move made by not only minimizing the cost of the trip, but also there are many other factors that must be considered when describing public urban transport system. Empirical analysis. We used the agent-based modeling. We described four types of agents (passenger agent, vehicle agent, transport hub agent, transport network agent) in urban transport system. We developed the state transition graph for modeling the life cycle of the individual agent. Results. We made the concept of a multi-agent model of passengers’ behavior, we described four main types of agents, and presented their interactions and redundancy. The simulation results may be applying for compare different strategies choice of optimal routes for individual passengers, as well as to search for rational transportation routes for urban transport.