Stated willingness to participate in travel surveys: a cross-country and cross-methods comparison

Transportation - Travel surveys are the primary source of data that feed into the analysis and modeling of travel behaviour. Numerous studies have found that the survey method, be it pen and paper,...     

Tour-based mode choice of joint household travel patterns on weekend and weekday

Joint household travel, with or without joint participation in an activity, constitutes a fundamental aspect in modelling activity-based travel behaviour. This paper examines joint household travel arrangements and mode choices using a utility maximising approach. An individual tour-based mode choice model is formulated contingent on the choice of joint tour patterns where joint household activities and shared ride arrangements are recognised as part of the joint household decision-making that influences the travel modes of each household member. Two models, one for weekend and one for weekday, are estimated using empirical data from the Sydney Household Travel Survey. The results show that weekend travel is characterised by a high joint household activity participation rate while weekday travel is distinguished by more intra-household shared ride arrangements. The arrangements of joint household travel are highly associated with travel purpose, social and mobility constraints and household resources. On weekends, public transport is mainly used by captive users (i.e., no-car households and students) and its share is about half of that on weekdays. Also, the value of travel time savings (VOTs) are found to be higher on weekends than on weekdays, running entirely counter to the common belief that weekend VOTs are lower than weekday VOTs. This paper highlights the importance of studying joint household travel and using different transport management measures for alleviating traffic congestion on weekdays and weekends.     

Area-wide travel plans—targeting strategies for greater participation in green travel initiatives: a case study of Rouse Hill Town Centre,NSW Australia

Travel planning by employers promoting more sustainable travel has delivered less car dependent behaviour for the commute in many places. Area-wide or precinct travel plans are less common but, where they exist, attempt to provide a more holistic approach through capturing synergies between employers and employees throughout a precinct. Area-based travel planning aimed at influencing employers, employees and residents are new, especially in relation to creating synergies for a single precinct that has more of an origin focus with participants travelling to diverse destinations. This paper examines various strategies that have been employed in order to achieve greener travel and to provide a self-sustaining travel planning environment. The aim of this paper is to assess the community awareness, interest and involvement with a number of green initiatives and to understand how sustainable travel planning has been absorbed by residents within a new regional centre in New South Wales, Australia. The analysis of a resident survey undertaken in 2011 distinguishes between the community awareness and their propensity to take part in each of the greener travel initiatives. The results show that a generic approach is likely to be less effective than segmenting the market so as to more directly target likely participants. Attitudes to greener travel are also highly significant and working to change them should also affect potential take up of sustainable travel initiatives. The conclusions inform the development of successful precinct based travel demand strategies both in Australia and beyond.     

Identifying a behaviourally relevant choice set from stated choice data

Stated choice experiments are designed optimally in a statistical sense but not necessarily in a behavioural choice making sense. Statistical designs, and consequently model estimation, assume that the set of alternatives offered in the experiment are processed by respondents with a specific processing strategy. Much has been studied about attribute processing using discrete choice methods in travel choice studies, but this paper focuses more broadly on processing of alternatives in the choice set offered in the experiment. This paper is motivated by the primary idea that the distribution of predicted choice probabilities associated with a set of alternatives defining a given choice set might provide strong evidence on the strategies that agents appear to use when choosing a preferred alternative. In an empirical setting of a choice set of size three, four model specifications are considered including a model for the selection of the best alternative in the full choice set and three variants of a best–worst regime. Using state choice data on road pricing reform, the empirical analysis examines which model specification delivers the most accurate prediction of the chosen alternative. The results suggest which alternatives really matter in choice making and hence the alternatives that might be included in a choice set for model specification.     

Modelling user satisfaction in public transport systems considering missing information

Collecting data to obtain insights into customer satisfaction with public transport services is very time-consuming and costly. Many factors such as service frequency, reliability and comfort during the trip have been found important drivers of customer satisfaction. Consequently, customer satisfaction surveys are quite lengthy, resulting in many interviews not being completed within the aboard time of the passengers/respondents. This paper questions as to whether it is possible to reduce the amount of information collected without a compromise on insights. To address this research question, we conduct a comparative analysis of different Ordered Probit models: one with a full list of attributes versus one with partial set of attributes. For the latter, missing information was imputed using three different methods that are based on modes, single imputations using predictive models and multiple imputation. Estimation results show that the partial model using the multiple imputation method behaves in a similar way to the model that is based on the full survey. This finding opens an opportunity to reduce interview time which is critical for most customer satisfaction surveys.

     

Do preferences for BRT and LRT change as a voter,citizen, tax payer,or self-interested resident?

Transportation - Interest in modal preferences remains a topic of high interest as governments make infrastructure decisions that often favour one mode over the other. An informative input into the...