Experience as a conditioning effect on choice: Does it matter whether it is exogenous or endogenous?

Previous choice studies have proposed a way to condition the utility of each alternative in a choice set on experience with the alternatives accumulated over previous periods, defined either as a mode used or not in a most recent trip, or the mode chosen in their most recent trip and the number of similar one-way trips made during the last week. The paper found that the overall statistical performance of the mixed logit model improved significantly, suggesting that this conditioning idea has merit. Experience was treated as an exogenous influence linked to the scale of the random component, and to that extent it captures some amount of the heterogeneity in unobserved effects, purging them of potential endogeneity. The current paper continues to investigate the matter of endogeneity versus exogeneity. The proposed approach implements the control function method through the experience conditioning feature in a choice model. We develop two choice models, both using stated preference data. The paper extends the received contribution in that we allow for the endogenous variable to have an impact on the attributes through a two stage method, called the Multiple Indicator Solution, originally implemented in a different context and for a single (quality) attribute, in which stage two is the popular control function method. In the first stage, the entire utility expression associated with all observed attributes is conditioned on the prior experience with an alternative. Hence, we are capturing possible correlates associated with each and every attribute and not just one selected attribute. We find evidence of potential endogeneity. The purging exercise however, results in both statistical similarities and differences in time and cost choice elasticities and mean estimates of the value of travel time savings. We are able to identify a very practical method to correct for possible endogeneity under experience conditioning that will encourage researchers and practitioners to use such an approach in more advanced non-linear discrete choice models as a matter of routine.

     

The role of perceived environment,neighbourhood characteristics,and attitudes in walking behaviour: evidence from a rapidly developing city in China

Transportation - The associations between objective and subjective dimensions of the built environment and walking behaviour have been examined extensively in existing studies. However, the...     

Perceived risk of lock-in in the front-end phase of major transportation projects

Transportation - Lock-in is defined as the tendency to continue with an inefficient decision or project proposal. The front-end phase is critical to project success, yet most studies have focused...     

A tool to aid redesign of flexible transport services to increase efficiency in rural transport service provision

Rural areas generally have lower and more dispersed demands for travel which cannot sustain conventional public transport services and consequently have a greater number of flexible and demand responsive transport services operating. These services usually operate on a stand-alone basis, are often subsidized and are typically only accessible by certain passenger types or for specific trip purposes. This generally results in uncoordinated and inefficient transport provision overall. The Flexible integrated transport services (FITS) system featured in this paper has been designed to address this problem. FITS can be used as a planning tool to assess potential benefits from relaxing operating constraints (e.g., a service's operating boundaries), which can potentially suggest service redesign. It also includes the capacity to assign subsidy payments on a trip by trip basis to increase cost efficiency whilst meeting a greater proportion of transport needs. The case study in the paper focusses on transport to health in the Aberdeenshire and Morayshire areas of Scotland in the UK. Despite flexible transport operators receiving public funds to meet passenger needs, this is currently being supplemented by public bodies paying large amounts in taxi fares in instances where there is a statutory obligation to provide travel but where no other suitable transport service exists. The results demonstrate the potential substantial savings which could be realized by allowing transport operators to redesign their services by relaxing constraints and by the reassignment of subsidies: resulting in more passenger demands being met and a reduction in public spending on taxi fares.     

Delivering mobility as a service (MaaS) through a broker/aggregator business model

Transportation - Mobility as a service (MaaS) promises a bold new future where bundled public transport and shared mobility options (carsharing, ridesharing, bikesharing and microtransit) will...     

Spatiotemporal traffic forecasting: review and proposed directions

This paper systematically reviews studies that forecast short-term traffic conditions using spatial dependence between links. We extract and synthesise 130 research papers, considering two perspectives: (1) methodological framework and (2) methods for capturing spatial information. Spatial information boosts the accuracy of prediction, particularly in congested traffic regimes and for longer horizons. Machine learning methods, which have attracted more attention in recent years, outperform the naïve statistical methods such as historical average and exponential smoothing. However, there is no guarantee of superiority when machine learning methods are compared with advanced statistical methods such as spatiotemporal autoregressive integrated moving average. As for the spatial dependency detection, a large gulf exists between the realistic spatial dependence of traffic links on a real network and the studied networks as follows: (1) studies capture spatial dependency of either adjacent or distant upstream and downstream links with the study link, (2) the spatially relevant links are selected either by prejudgment or by correlation-coefficient analysis, and (3) studies develop forecasting methods in a corridor test sample, where all links are connected sequentially together, assume a similarity between the behaviour of both parallel and adjacent links, and overlook the competitive nature of traffic links.     

The accuracy of proxy responses in a stated choice setting: A re-examination and some controversial conclusions

Data is typically gathered from an individual respondent who represents the group or the household. This individual is often identified as the “primary decision maker” and is asked to provide responses as a proxy for the group given that the cost of interviewing each member individually is impractical and/or expensive. The collection of joint preferences is rarely undertaken, with the use of proxy responses not uncommon in travel behaviour research. Under such a framework, there exists an assumption that the primary decision maker has perfect knowledge of other group member preferences, and bargaining behaviour, and is able to synthesise this information when providing a response on their behalf. The validity of such an assumption however remains an open question, with recent research calling the reliability of proxy responses into account (Bateman and Munro, 2009). In this paper, using three models estimated in willingness to pay space, we examine the accuracy of proxy responses in a stated choice experiment. We find that there is overlap between a proxy response and the own preferences of the individual providing the proxy choice, but while the proxy responses fail to represent the full preference heterogeneity that exists in the actual choices made by individuals, the proxy responses in aggregate provide a suitable replacement for actual data, subject to a number of caveats.     

Expertise in decision-making for large infrastructure projects: from UK trunk roads to High Speed Rail 2

At the decision-making stage, a large-scale infrastructure project is essentially a broad concept, and this means the expert analyses will differ from each other and become contested over time, leading to the emergence of rival narratives. It is only where there is a limited range of expert analyses that the bases for decision-making will remain relatively clear-cut. Over time the contested nature of expertise can significantly inhibit the construction of effective narratives, either for or against the project, and also make decision-making more complex and problematic. Decision makers may also seek greater clarification through the construction of narratives that rise above these disputed areas of expertise, and the scientific evidence becomes less important. This paper examines the changing nature of contested expertise through a comparative analysis of political decision-making between UK trunk roads policy and the case of High Speed Rail 2, through the framework of epistemic communities.     

Value of travel time reliability: A review of current evidence

Travel time reliability is a fundamental factor in travel behavior. It represents the temporal uncertainty experienced by travelers in their movement between any two nodes in a network. The importance of the time reliability depends on the penalties incurred by the travelers. In road networks, travelers consider the existence of a trip travel time uncertainty in different choice situations (departure time, route, mode, and others). In this paper, a systematic review of the current state of research in travel time reliability, and more explicitly in the value of travel time reliability is presented. Moreover, a meta-analysis is performed in order to determine the reasons behind the discrepancy among the reliability estimates.