Browsing by Subject "Shopping trips"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Accessibility, Network Structure, and Consumers’ Destination Choice: A GIS Analysis of GPS Travel Data and the CLUSTER Simulation Module for Retail Location Choice
    (Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2012-10) Huang, Arthur; Levinson, David
    Anecdotal and empirical evidence has shown strong associations between the built environment and individuals’ travel decision. To date, data about individuals’ travel behavior and the nature of the retail environment have not been linked at the fine-grained level for verifying such relationships. GPS and GIS have revolutionized how we measure and monitor land use and individual travel behavior. Compared with traditional travel survey methods, GPS technologies provide more accurate and detailed information about individuals’ trips. Based the GPS travel data in the Twin Cities we analyze the impact of individuals’ interactions with road network structure and the destinations’ accessibility on individuals’ destination choice for home-based non-work retail trips. The results reveal that higher accessibility and diversity of services make the destination more attractive. Further, accessibility and diversity of establishments in a walking zone are often highly correlated. A destination reached via a more circuitous or discontinuous route dampens its appeal. In addition, we build an agent-based simulation tool to study retail location choice on a supply chain network consisting of suppliers, retailers, and consumers. The simulation software illustrates that the clustering of retailers can emerge from the balance of distance to suppliers and the distance to consumers. We further applied this tool in the Transportation Geography and Networks course (CE 5180) at the University of Minnesota. Student feedback reveals that it is a useful active learning tool for transportation and urban planning education. The software also has the potential of being extended for an integrated regional transportation-land use forecasting model.
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    Measuring the impacts of local land-use policies on vehicle miles of travel: The case of the first big-box store in Davis, California
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2013) Lovejoy, Kristin; Sciara, Gian-Claudia; Salon, Deborah; Handy, Susan; Mokhtarian, Patricia
    Concerns over climate change have brought new impetus to the goal of reducing vehicle travel through land-use policy. To determine the degree to which land-use policies are effective in reducing vehicle travel, studies are needed that measure and compare vehicle travel both before and after a land-use policy change. The opening of the first big-box retail store in Davis, California, represented a major change in the retail landscape and an unusual opportunity to study its effect on shopping travel. Surveys of residents' shopping behavior conducted before and after the opening of the store revealed a significant shift in where people shopped and a measurable reduction in overall vehicle miles traveled (VMT) for shopping. Although the observed change in VMT is specific to the Davis context, the findings support the general proposition that bringing retail destinations closer to residences could help reduce vehicle travel, particularly where the comparable alternatives for the newly introduced store are far away. The study also offers important insights into the challenges of conducting before-and-after studies of the impact of local land-use changes.
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    Mode Choice of Older People Before and After Shopping
    (Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2009) Su, Fengming; Schmöcker, Jan-Dirk; Bell, Michael G.H.
    With the population aging in many countries, older people’s travel is recently getting more attention in the transportation literature. However our understanding of factors influencing their mode choice is still limited. In this research the focus is on mode choice for shopping trips as these are the most frequent trips of older people. The study is not limited to trips to the shopping centre, but investigates the combined mode choice of trips to and from the shop in order to understand also which factors influence mode changes. Two types of models - the multinomial logit (MNL) and the nested logit (NL) - are fitted to data from the London Area Travel Survey. The nesting structure is used to test the correlation in mode choice before and after shopping. A particular focus of the models is on the importance of accessibility variables such as bus and rail stop density and service quality for specific areas of London. The results show that mode choice combinations such as “walk to shop and take the bus back” are not as frequent as sometimes thought and that bus stop density is of more significance to older people than attributes describing the quality of the bus services like service frequency.