Testing the accuracy of collected geoinformation in the Norwegian Personal Travel Survey––experiences from a pilot study

This paper presents results from a pilot study to the Norwegian Personal Travel Survey 2001 designed to test the quality of geographical information in travel surveys. The use of travel surveys to produce input data for transport modelling requires respondents to provide adequate geographical information on their trips. Data from a telephone survey of 1500 respondents are analysed, and it is shown that people in general are capable of recalling street addresses of places they have been to or give alternative geographical information to help locate trips at a set level. However, the accuracy of location recall varies with respect to place of residence, trip purpose and transport mode.     

Transit-based job accessibility and urban spatial structure

Job accessibility is a measure of people, opportunities, and transportation system that are fundamental elements of urban spatial structure. Therefore, job accessibility can be used as a tool to understand urban spatial structure. Studying transit-based job accessibility can provide more insight into inner cities. To study transit-based job accessibility, a person-based approach is needed in order to take full consideration of the elements. However, person-based approaches are substantially restricted by the availability of individual trip data. This paper takes a simulation approach to study transit-based job accessibility. First, transit-dependent worker agents are generated using a population synthesis. Then the agents are enabled with job search and commuting capabilities. Once the agents are deployed in a commuting simulation, individual commuting trips are recorded. An individual job accessibility index is developed based on simulated commuting trips. The index is normalized with an expected value of 1.0 and a measurable uncertainty level, which makes it easy to interpret and suitable for cross-regional studies. A case study is conducted in Tucson, Arizona, where about 10,000 transit-dependent worker agents produce more than 600,000 individual commuting trips during morning and afternoon peak hours. Census block, group-level job accessibility shows a random spatial pattern that coincides with a dispersed urban spatial structure of the case study area.     

Characteristics and Behaviour of Tourists Who Use Trails

This article documents the popularity of five types of trail-based recreation relative to other forms of recreation that tourists frequently participate in on their trips; identifies these trail users’ cross-participation in other outdoor recreation activities; and profiles the travel behaviour, media habits, trip planning behaviour, and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of day hikers and snowmobilers as two particularly large trail user segments. Findings are based on data from a household telephone survey conducted in Michigan, surrounding states, and Ontario, Canada. Hiking/backpacking was found to be the most popular natural resource-based recreation activity that respondents participated in on pleasure trips taken during the past 12 months; other forms of trail-based recreation were significantly less popular; mountain bikers participated in nature-oriented recreation activities in Michigan at levels that were similar to those of hikers/backpackers; and snowmobiling appeared to be the focus of most pleasure trips on which this activity occurred, in contrast to day hiking, which appeared to be more of an ancillary pursuit.     

Zonal method for urban travel surveys: sustainability and sample distance from the CBD

This paper details a method of surveying the travel behaviour and values of households within inner, middle and outer urban zones. This survey of 400 households in two North Queensland (Australia) cities provides details of 3500 urban trips, travel modes and choices linked to household location. Stratified sampling based on distance from the Central Business District shows pronounced methodological advantages. This simple and effective method shows that outer urban dwellers used about three times the amount of fuel as their more central counterparts, placing them at the vanguard of unsustainable urban travel, a great challenge for policy, developers and city planners.     

The impacts of the built environment on bicycle-metro transfer trips: A new method to delineate metro catchment area based on people's actual cycling space

Bicycle-metro integration is an efficient method of solving the “last mile” issue around metro stations. Built environment is believed to have a significant effect on cycling behavior. However, transfer cycling around metro stations, as a specific type of cycling behavior, has often been overlooked in transport research. In addition, static contextual units such as circular or street-network buffers are typically used to delineate metro catchment areas of transfer cycling trips. These methods are inaccurate to represent the actual geographic contexts of cycling trips, according to the uncertain geographic context problem (UGCoP). Thus, in this study, bicycle-metro catchment areas are delineated based on aggregating the end points of over three million transfer cycling trips. The impact of the built environment on transfer cycling behavior is also explored.First, we find that the aggregate-points buffer outperforms traditional static buffers in predicting transfer cycling trips. Second, we also identify a high level of spatial heterogeneity in catchment area and transfer cycling density between urban and suburban areas. Third, residential and working population density, bus stop density, and metro stations accessibility have a significant effect on bicycle-metro transfer cycling.     

Changes in the frequency of shopping trips in response to a congestion charge

This paper presents an analysis of shopping trips into London's central shopping district (Oxford Street area) before and after the introduction of the congestion charging scheme in February 2003. In collaboration with a major department store, three surveys have been conducted in order to understand the changes in shopping frequency and the reasons for so doing. The analysis is based on tabulations of the raw data, binary logit models to analyse which customer groups have reduced their shopping frequency and ordered logit models to analyse which groups have reduced their shopping more than others. The outcome shows that within the sample surveyed the congestion charging scheme has caused a significant number to shop less often in central London and only a few to shop more often in the Oxford Street area. Negative experiences with the congestion charging scheme or a generally bad perception of the scheme are the main reasons for this. Other events, such as the Central Line closure or terrorist threats occurring at the same time also have a temporary influence on the shopping frequency in central London. Evidence from other travel demand measures on city centre shopping activities suggest that the long-term effects of the congestion charge could be more positive.     

Competing on value: Perspectives on business class aviation

This paper presents an airline consumer choice model to analyze value propositions – the benefits delivered to passengers in relation to the fares paid. The model is developed using a study of clientele flying business class, studying three premium start-up airlines Eos, MaxJet and Silverjet that provided business-class-only flights on London–New York routes. Premium airlines were compared to selected rival full-service carriers for sustainability of their business class value propositions, using preference profiles of five target customer groups that comprise the business class passenger population. We find that the three premium start-up airlines were superior in offering some appealing features at reasonable fares that were highly valued by some passengers, although they were unable to replicate some other attractive aspects in the value propositions of the incumbents. This suggests a coexistence of premium entrants and incumbent carriers would have been possible, had the environment they operated in not changed drastically for the worse, before the premium entrants had achieved the financial robustness necessary for survival.     

3种移动闭塞模式下列车延迟传播规律的研究

介绍了移动空间闭塞、移动时间闭塞、完全移动闭塞3种移动闭塞模式,模拟讨论了3种模式下的列车延迟传播现象及其规律。模拟结果表明,在相同的初始延迟时间下,完全移动闭塞模式晚点列车总数最少,总的列车晚点时间最小;移动空间闭塞模式晚点列车总数最多,总的列车晚点时间最大。     

Bikesharing Trip Patterns in New York City: Associations with Land Use,Subways, and Bicycle Lanes

As bikesharing systems have proliferated, few studies have examined the trips made on these systems. In this paper, we examine trips between origin-destination pairs during three months in 2015 on New York City’s Citi Bike system. Findings suggest considerable variation across user types, across months, and across times of day. Principal findings indicate that bikesharing is used for transit access and egress during rush hours, and that stations located along the same high-quality bicycle route see far more trips than do other station pairs. Casual users complement subscribers’ usage by using bicycles more frequently during midday and the evening, and between areas characterized by nearby recreational land uses. Loop trips to and from the same station also occur and are likely recreational trips. The data analyzed is essentially a form of “big data.” That is, large data sets that are ubiquitously collected. The analysis suggests that in this case, “big data” that lacks the socio-economic data commonly collected and used in travel analysis can provide useful insights to planners.     

Geographic heterogeneity in cycling under various weather conditions: evidence from Greater Rotterdam

With its sustainability, health and accessibility benefits, cycling has nowadays been established on research and policy agendas. Notwithstanding the decision to cycle is closely related to local weather conditions and interwoven with the geographical context, research dealing with both aspects is scarce. On the basis of travel diary data, we assess the association of three weather conditions, namely air temperature, wind speed, and precipitation, on cycling trips for leisure and commute purposes for the Greater Rotterdam area, the Netherlands. Besides region-wide logit models and autologistic regressions, place-specific associations of weather conditions are explored through geographically weighted logit models. Considering the entire Rotterdam area, results confirm significant weather effects on cycling while highlighting the necessity to model the residents’ locational component. When the confounding effects of individual and household characteristics are controlled, a key finding is that weather effects appear to vary across space, specifically between the more densely settled central environments and the surrounding lower-density areas. Additionally, the results show differences between leisure and commute trips, in which leisure trips appear to be more weather sensitive and show more pronounced spatial patterns.     

Uncovering the spatiotemporal patterns of CO2 emissions by taxis based on Individuals' daily travel

Traffic-related carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions have become a major problem in cities. Especially, the CO₂ emissions induced by taxis account for a high proportion in total CO₂ emissions. The availability of taxi trajectory data presents new opportunities for addressing CO₂ emissions induced by taxis. Few previous studies have analyzed the impact of human trips on CO₂ emissions. This paper investigates trip-related CO₂ emission patterns based on individuals' travel behavior using taxi trajectory data. First, we propose a trip purpose inference method that takes into account the spatiotemporal attractiveness of POIs to divide human trips into different types. Further, we reveal the spatiotemporal patterns of CO₂ emissions from various types of trips, including temporal regularity and periodicity as well as spatial distribution of “black areas”. Finally, comparative analysis of CO₂ emissions for different kinds of trips based on trip behavior is conducted using three variables, namely trip distance, trip duration and trip speed. This study is helpful for us to understand how to make travel and cities more sustainable through modifying people's trip behaviors or taxi trips.     

Spatial analysis of shared e-scooter trips

Shared e-scooters have become a common mode of transportation in many cities around the world. E-sooters provide convenient and quick rides for short distances and can act as a connection for first/last mile trips. To date, limited studies have explored the spatial variation of e-scooter trips and there is knowledge to be gained by investigating variables associated with e-scooter trip generation. This study implemented a spatial analysis approach, Geographical Weighted Regression (GWR), to explore how factors relating to demographics, density, diversity, design, urbanism scores, distance to transit and other transportation-related variables influence e-scooter trips in Louisville, KY. More than 400,000 e-scooter trips across 159 Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) were included in the study. Results show TAZ-level factors including land use, age distribution, gender distribution, Walk Score and Park Score impacted the density of e-scooters trips in the TAZ. The GWR model showed improvements over a global Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model. Local goodness of fit ranged from 0.732–0.895 across the study area. This study can help governments and e-scooter sharing companies develop policies that maximize e-scooter use, equity, and accessibility while improving the mobility of cities.     

Analysis of travel behavior in Arab communities in Israel: a comparison of household surveys

This paper analyzes the main characteristics of travel behavior by the Arab minority community in Israel and discusses two issues related to household travel surveys: data collection among minorities and under-reporting of mid-day trips.Household travel surveys are generally designed and conducted for the majority population and, therefore, lack a proper accounting of minorities and miss many of their less-frequent trips. An alternative approach to conducting household surveys is presented, with the aim of improving data quality for transportation planning. The survey was designed for and conducted in three Arab towns in Israel. The main improvement of the survey involves better interaction between interviewer and interviewee, which should materialize into a relaxed environment that allows for obtaining detailed, reliable results within a reasonable amount of time.The results of the survey employing the alternative approach were compared to a sub-sample of the same towns taken from a regional survey conducted by the regional planning agency at the same time. The paper presents simple statistics on the main variables for each survey. Significant differences are found in the two data sets, mostly regarding the frequency of less frequent, non-home-based trips. A plausible explanation for these differences relates to the more detailed and improved data collected in the new survey.     

User satisfaction with specialised transport for disabled in Norway

The aim of this article is to examine factors that are most important for the users' overall satisfaction with specialised transport services for the disabled (STS) in Norway. The article focuses especially on gender differences. We find that the three factors most strongly influencing overall satisfaction with the STS for all users are the size of the area in which the service can be used, the comfort experienced during transport, and the number of trips on which STS can be used. Men's satisfaction with the STS is more strongly influenced by the size of the travel area than is the case for women. The degree to which women are satisfied with the STS is more strongly influenced by the comfort and number of trips than is the case for men. The method used in this article to measure users' overall satisfaction can be valuable for other researchers conducting comparable studies, and our findings may be applied by politicians aiming to design an STS which fulfils the needs of the elderly and disabled.     

Activity spaces: measures of social exclusion?

The paper provides a first investigation of the suitability of different measures of activity space size to identify persons at risk of social exclusion. This would be a new departure for the measurement of social exclusion, which so far has relied either on aggregate measures of locations or cross-sectional data of individuals.The size of a person's activity space can only be estimated with information reflecting a longer time horizon. In this paper the six-week travel diary survey (Mobidrive) is used, which was conducted in two German cities in 1999. About 95% of all local trips were coded for 300 respondents (about 45,000 trips).The paper develops three possible measurement approaches of increasing complexity (confidence ellipse, kernel density estimates, shortest paths networks). The analysis revealed that the main driver of the size of the activity spaces is the overall number of unique locations visited by the respondents and to a lesser extent, their socio-demographic characteristics. In particular, the groups most often consider to be at risk of social exclusion (female, lower income, elderly) did not show significantly different activity spaces.     

Factors influencing motivations and expectations of field trip attendance

This paper examines students’ motivations for participating in field trips and analyses students’ expectations in an attempt to identify the influence of three variables: age, level of education, and previous work experience. Results demonstrate that students’ reasons for participation are diverse, and while the results are specific for the case analysed, they support prior research, suggesting that students develop very positive attitudes and perceptions towards field trips.     

Walking to transit: An unexpected source of physical activity

Using data from a regional survey carried out in Montreal, this paper shows empirical evidence that modal shift from car to transit contributes to the volume of daily physical activity. First, the paper presents a method to calculate the walking distance related to transit trips, and a totally disaggregate trip assignment model. The walking distance involved in every transit trip is then associated to the individuals' characteristics to estimate the number of steps made by the population in the whole transit system.Results show that, in average, a transit trip involves 1250 steps, required to access and egress the network as well as to transfer between routes or modes. Thus, a round trip represents 2500 steps, which account for 25% of the recommended volume of physical activity per day. Hence, analysis shows that the volume of walking varies according to attributes of the traveler (general decrease with age, higher for men) and of the trip (study and work trip involve more steps, the use of train generates more steps). A regression model confirms that these variables significantly affect the number of steps involved in transit trips. Such positive outcome, for the traveler himself, is an innovative argument to promote the use of transit that is also aligned with current sustainable transportation goals.     

Logistics facilities for intra and inter-regional shipping: Spatial distributions,location choice factors,and externality

Existing studies of urban logistics facility locations and their impacts on negative externality tend to focus on the movements of freight that start and end within a metropolitan area and overlook the role of the shipments with origin or destination outside of the urban area – external shipments – in characterizing logistics facilities. This research aims to fill such gap. Focusing on the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, we analyze locations and goods vehicle trips associated with four logistics facility groups that have different splits between intra and inter-regional trips for inbound and outbound shipments. The spatial density analysis and the location choice modeling highlight the differences in the distribution and location choice factors among those groups. The importance of trip distance minimization is more evident for the facilities that serve intra-regional shipments. Furthermore, we show that the traffic impacts of goods vehicle traffic associated with logistics facilities also differ in many ways among the above-mentioned groups. Finally, we discuss the policy insights to address their heterogeneity in the contribution to externality.     

Are intrazonal trips ignorable?

Intrazonal trips are not always included in model estimation because they do not appear on a network in centroid-to-centroid travel. It is also presumed that their exclusion does not affect model results. This paper tests the above presumption by examining the assumptions of ignorable missingness. The results indicate that omitting intrazonal trips in model estimation results in biased sample. Consequently, parameter estimates get biased. The paper also compares the results of travel mode choice models by excluding and including the intrazonal trips in model estimation.     

An exploration of the environmental and rider characteristics associated with disability paratransit trip delay

Over the past two decades, a number of studies have been published on the efficiency of paratransit service for persons with disabilities. Although speed, delay, and pick-up duration can significantly affect overall efficiency of paratransit service, studies that have focused on these performance measures have been rare. This study examines how these performance measures are associated with local environmental characteristics such as density and the characteristics of the trip makers. It uses a dataset containing detailed information on a large volume of trips made by the registered clients of Access Link, a paratransit service operated by NJ TRANSIT for persons with disabilities. To measure speed and delay, network distances for 1.91 million trips were estimated by the ArcGIS Network Analyst extension. Analysis of variance and regression models were used to examine the associations between the performance measures and a set of variables pertaining to trips, passengers, and characteristics of pick-up and drop-off locations. Models for the entire study area as well as specific Access Link regions show that there is a significant association between local environmental and personal characteristics of passengers and the performance measures. Evidence was found that higher density of population, employment, and intersections at the local level may have a significant adverse effect on service efficiency because of lower speed and higher delay. Planning implications of the findings are discussed.