How does purchasing intangible services online influence the travel to consume these services? A focus on a Chinese context

Transportation - A considerable number of empirical studies have explored the effects of information & communication technologies (ICT) on travel in recent years. In particular, the most...     

Do changes in the residential location lead to changes in travel attitudes? A structural equation modeling approach

Transportation - Numerous studies have found that travel attitudes might not only affect travel behavior, but also the residential location choice as people might choose a residential location...     

公司交通政策的最佳实践——以比利时为例

公司是通勤交通的主要创造者,在与交通相关的讨论中,公司扮演着重要角色。近几年,公司提出了多种政策措施,以改善员工的出行条件,但其愿景与行动通常被研究文献所忽视。为了讨论比利时公司在交通政策方面的最佳实践,分析了现有研究成果和比利时的两次大规模通勤交通调查。首先,对公司进行分类,以便确定在推广替代交通方式方面受员工欢迎的公司。然后,通过量化分析确定交通政策的最佳实践。结果显示,最佳替代交通方式取决于公司特征;自行车交通最适合小型工作场所,大型工作场所和位于建筑密集区或市中心的公司则更适合推广公共交通;在公司交通管理中,财务激励、设施提供、信息传播和停车管理均起重要作用。     

Determining the Monetary Value of Quality Attributes in Freight Transportation Using a Stated Preference Approach

It is commonly accepted that the modal choice of a shipper is influenced not only by the pure economic attributes of transportation – time and cost – but also by more qualitative factors. These quality attributes relate to frequency, reliability, flexibility, transport duration and risk of loss or damage; they are usually difficult to quantify in monetary terms. Different techniques exist that help to understand better how these different quality attributes of freight transportation influence modal choice. In this paper we apply a stated preference design. Using real business data, the aim is then to derive partial utility functions that allow us to calculate monetary values for these different quality attributes.     

Travel mode choice and travel satisfaction: bridging the gap between decision utility and experienced utility

Over the past decades research on travel mode choice has evolved from work that is informed by utility theory, examining the effects of objective determinants, to studies incorporating more subjective variables such as habits and attitudes. Recently, the way people perceive their travel has been analyzed with transportation-oriented scales of subjective well-being, and particularly the satisfaction with travel scale. However, studies analyzing the link between travel mode choice (i.e., decision utility) and travel satisfaction (i.e., experienced utility) are limited. In this paper we will focus on the relation between mode choice and travel satisfaction for leisure trips (with travel-related attitudes and the built environment as explanatory variables) of study participants in urban and suburban neighborhoods in the city of Ghent, Belgium. It is shown that the built environment and travel-related attitudes—both important explanatory variables of travel mode choice—and mode choice itself affect travel satisfaction. Public transit users perceive their travel most negatively, while active travel results in the highest levels of travel satisfaction. Surprisingly, suburban dwellers perceive their travel more positively than urban dwellers, for all travel modes.     

Does a circular high-speed rail network promote efficiency and spatial equity in transport accessibility? Evidence from Hainan Island,China

This paper investigates the efficiency and spatial equity impacts of a unique island-looping high-speed rail (HSR) network in Hainan province, China. An integrated network and raster-based model is applied to accurately measure the accessibility indicators. We perform analysis at four different geographical planning levels – island, corridor, spillover, and county level. The HSR with a non-polarized topology can increase the accessibility of the entire island and corridor, but only leads to a slight increase in the spillover areas without HSR stations. HSR construction also leads to spatial cohesion for the entire island and corridor. Although the circular HSR network consists of several HSR stations distributed relatively equally, the results show that counties contribute differently to the cohesion of the entire island due to the varied initial level of accessibility values. Moreover, the county-level analysis reveals that the internal changes of each county are also different with balancing, polarization, and neutral effects appearing. Therefore, the internal equity of counties needs to be combined with their external contributions to global equity. Our framework permits policymakers to make customized HSR transport policies at different planning levels, particularly for an isolated area.     

In Search of the Link between Ship Size and Operations

Abstract

Since 1990s the liner shipping industry has faced a period of restructuring and consolidation, and been confronted with a continuing increase in container vessel scale. The impact of these changes is noticeable in trade patterns, cargo handling methods and shipping routes, in short ‘operations’. After listing factors influencing size, growth in container ship size is explained by economies of scale in deploying larger vessels. In order to quantify economies of scale, this paper uses the liner service cash flow model. A novelty in the model is the inclusion of +6000-20-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) vessels and the distinction in costs between single and twin propeller units on ships. The results illustrate that scale economies have been – and will continue to be – the driving force behind the deployment of larger container vessels. The paper then assesses the link between ship size and operations, given current discussions about the increase in container vessel scale. It is found that (a) ship size and operations are linked; (b) optimal ship size depends on transport segment (deep-sea vs. short-sea shipping, SSS), terminal type (transhipment terminals vs. other terminals), trade lane (East-West vs. North-South trades) and technology; and (c) a ship optimal for one trade can be suboptimal for another.     

Introducing a commute-energy performance index for Flanders

Based on 2001-census data for Belgium, energy consumption levels for commuting were calculated and mapped on the basis of residential locations in the administrative regions of Flanders and Brussels. Comparison with regional differentiations in commuting distances, modal shares of non-car travel modes and aspects of infrastructure and population densities clarifies some relationships between energy consumption, commuting behaviour and spatial-economic structure in the suburbanised historic–polycentric spatial structure which characterises the northern part of Belgium. It is found that mode choice appears to be of little impact for the energy performance of home-to-work travel on the scale of the Flanders region. At the other hand, proximity between home and work locations is paramount.Residential density plays a part in this, although much depends on the specific situation. This is also the case for the accessibility of the main road and rail network. In some regions these infrastructures induce long-distance commuting, whereas in the economic core areas this effect is much less pronounced. All these are factors that are very much determined by infrastructural and spatial policies of the past.     

Commuting trips within tours: how is commuting related to land use?

Studies that model the effects of land use on commuting generally use a trip-based approach or a more aggregated individual-based approach: i.e. commuting is conceptualized in terms of modal choice, distance and time per single trip, or in terms of daily commuting distance or time. However, people try to schedule activities in a daily pattern and, thus, consider tours instead of trips. Data from the 2000 to 2001 Travel Behaviour Survey in Ghent (Belgium) illustrate that car use and commuting times significantly differ between commuting trips within work-only tours and more complex tours. Therefore, this paper considers trip-related decisions simultaneously with tour-related decisions. A multiple group structural equation model (SEM) confirmed that the relationship between land use and commuting differs between work-only tours and more complex tours. Trips should be considered within tours in order to correctly understand the effect of land use scenarios such as densifying on commuting. Moreover, the use of multiple group SEM enabled us to address the issue of the complex nature of commuting. Due to interactions between various explanatory variables, land use patterns do not always have the presumed effect on commuting. Land use policy can successfully influence commuting, but only if it simultaneously accounts for the effects on car availability, car use, commuting distance and commuting time.     

Transportation Risk ANalysis tool for hazardous Substances (TRANS) – A user-friendly,semi-quantitative multi-mode hazmat transport route safety risk estimation methodology for Flanders

The paper develops a methodology for assessing the relative risk levels in moving hazardous materials by various transport modes. Transportation Risk ANalysis tool for hazardous Substances (TRANS) divides routes into smaller segments using multi-criteria analysis and likelihood scores of accidents in which dangerous cargoes are involved possibly causing fatalities. The consequences of accident scenarios are calculated in terms of the number of people within 1% of the lethal distance from the accident centre. This provides a user-friendly, semi-quantitative risk analysis tool. The generic method allows for comparing the risk levels of the segments of routes used in the transportation of hazardous goods.