Browsing by Subject "Travel demand"

Now showing 1 - 12 of 12

Better Understanding the Potential Market of Metro Transit's Ridership and Service
(University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies, 2006-10) Krizek, Kevin; El-Geneidy, Ahmed
Ridership is a key element in the transit industry. Conventional travel analysis focuses on two types of transit users: captive and choice riders. Captive riders are typically those who lack an alternative to transit; they therefore use it as their primary mode of transportation to reach their destination. Choice riders are those who have realistic alternatives (e.g., driving) but choose to use transit for various trips. Service reliability and availability affects the ridership of both populations. However, substantial increases in ridership are usually assumed to be derived only from choice riders. Populations not using transit may be further considered as two distinct populations: auto captives and potential riders. Auto captives are mainly auto users who don’t have transit as a potential mode of transportation or would not even realistically consider using transit. Potential riders are currently not using transit for certain reasons and/or concerns, but may consider the idea of using transit based on certain criteria. This research analyzes results from two surveys conducted in the Twin Cities metropolitan region: one of existing riders and the other of non-riders. The aim is to understand the characteristics of both captive and choice riders, with an eye toward the factors that can increase ridership of the latter population. This research classifies riders and non-riders differently from previous research. In addition to the captivity of modes, the classification considers regularity of commuting. Accordingly, transit riders are classified as one of four categories: captive riders with regular commuting habits, captive riders with irregular commuting habits, choice riders with regular commuting habits, and choice riders with irregular commuting habits. Similarly, there are four types of non-riders: auto captives with regular commuting habits, auto captives with irregular commuting habits, potential riders with regular commuting habits, and potential riders with irregular commuting habits. Using the survey data to uncover such population, this research then comments on how using advanced forms of technology could increase the ridership from various populations.
Chained Trips in Montgomery County, Maryland
(Institute of Transportation Engineers, 1995-05) Kumar, Ajay; Levinson, David M
This paper analyzes the 1987-88 Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments home interview survey to understand how work trips are combined into trip chains and to relate trip chaining with demographic and travel characteristics. The focus is on the work trips during the morning and afternoon peak period and the stops made on the way for performing nonwork activities. The work trips during the afternoon period are much more likely to involve trip chaining as compared to the morning period. Women are more likely to link work trips with other activities as compared to men. Stops are closer to home than work.
Exploring Strategies for Promoting Modal Shifts to Transitways
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2015-12) Cao, Jason; Fan, Yingling; Guthrie, Andrew; Zhang, Yi
Transitways represent large public investments whose positive impacts must be maximized whenever possible to justify the expenditures they entail. Prominent among those looked-for positive impacts is the encouragement of automobile-to-transit mode shifts by attracting increased transitway ridership. This study explores the impacts of travel time, travel cost, and population density on mode choice, using the 2010 Travel Behavior Inventory. We found a monetary value of in-vehicle travel time of $17.5/hour and a transfer penalty of $10, equivalent to 35 minutes in-vehicle travel time. Density, especially at destinations, has important effects, but travel time is the key to promote the shift to transit. The research also employs a Direct Ridership Model (DRM) to predict boardings at the station level as a function of transit-supportive policies. We find that station-area focused policies promoting affordable housing and sidewalks on all streets in station areas or entire cities have a significant and positive impact on ridership if there are sufficient potential destinations in the immediate station area, measured as the number of Google places within 100 meters. Based on our results, we stress the importance of station area affordable housing as a transit system efficiency measure, as well as for the social equity reasons it is usually encouraged. We recommend strengthening proaffordable housing policies and pro-sidewalk policies in Twin Cities station areas, supporting and encouraging for the neighborhood-scale commercial development that is required for their efficacy, and the continued implementation of pro-affordable housing policies and pro-sidewalk policies as the regional transitway system expands.
Heterogeneous links between urban form and mobility: A comparison of São Paulo, Istanbul and Mumbai
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2018) Kandt, Jens
This paper presents determinants of travel demand in three important cities in emerging economies: São Paulo, Istanbul and Mumbai. By comparison, similarities and differences of travel demand among the cities are identified and discussed with regard to their geographical, institutional and spatio-physical conditions. Special attention is paid to the hitherto understudied impact of the built environment on travel in emerging economy cities. Drawing on identical household surveys carried out in each city, the study reveals that gender, social status, car ownership and geographical location are consistently associated with mode choice. Yet, the relative importance of those characteristics differs in each city in line with their distinct socio-cultural realities. Trip duration appears to be more affected by built-environment characteristics, once mode choice is taken into account. But, again, potential influences of the built environment operate in different ways in São Paulo, Istanbul and Mumbai. In particular, there appears to be a closer relationship between transport and land-use in Mumbai. The variation-finding, comparative design reveals plural associations of life situation, the built environment and travel, and thus evinces specific interactions that require contextual policy attention to achieve sustainable and inclusive urban mobility.
Location choice for a continuous simulation of long periods under changing conditions
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2014) Märki, Fabian; Charypar, David; Axhausen, Kay
The authors propose a location choice procedure that is capable of handling changing conditions of aspects with different time horizons. It integrates expected travel time, current location effectiveness, prospective location effectiveness, and individual unexplained location perception into a decision heuristic that considers different planning horizons simultaneously and decides on-the-fly about future location visits. Multiple simulation runs illustrate agents' location choice behavior in various situations and confirm that the model enables agents to simultaneously consider seasonal effects, weather conditions, expected travel times, and individual unexplained location preference in their location choice.
Mobility, access, and choice: A new source of evidence
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2013) Metz, David
The availability of a large national data set of accessibility indicators allows investigation of the relationship between mobility and access to, and choice of, key destinations for the population of England. The destinations considered are primary and secondary schools, further education colleges, family doctors, hospitals, food stores, and places of employment. For the populations of 353 local authorities, the average extent of choice of these destinations is estimated as a function of travel time and mode. It is concluded that high levels of access and choice are available to the large part of the population that has available a car or good public transport. This finding is consistent with the suggestion that the demand for daily travel has saturated.
Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program Evaluation Study, Phase 2
(Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, 2011-05) Götschi, Thomas; Krizek, Kevin J.; McGinnis, Laurie; Lucke, Jan; Barbeau, Joe
The Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program (NTPP) is a congressionally mandated program (SAFETEA-LU Section 1807) that, since 2006, has provided roughly $25 million each to four communities—Columbia, Missouri; Marin County, California; Minneapolis area, Minnesota; Sheboygan County, Wisconsin—to spur levels of walking and cycling via a variety of planning measures. The University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies is leading the community-wide population surveys for the Nonmotorized Transportation Pilot Program (NTPP), specifically in phase 2, to measure changes in levels of walking and bicycling as a result of the enhanced conditions for walking and bicycling. To evaluate impacts of the program, two community-wide surveys were conducted before (phase 1: 2006) and after (phase 2: 2010) the pilot program. This report describes the evaluation efforts based on community-wide population surveys. In contrast to project-specific evaluations, community-wide surveys serve the purpose of representatively assessing community-wide levels of nonmotorized travel behavior, which serve as the foundation for subsequent benefit calculations. The survey in phase 1 consisted of a short mail-out questionnaire and a computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) among respondents to the short questionnaire. In phase 2 the short questionnaire was integrated in the CATI. The final sample in phase 1 consisted of 1279 complete records and in phase 2 of 1807 complete records. Statistical analysis focused on evaluating differences between phase 1 and phase 2 in the core variables on nonmotorized travel behavior. The detailed analysis did not reveal any consistent or statistically significant differences between phases 1 and 2. It is important to point out that the inability to detect significant patterns of change is not synonymous to no change occurring. The report discusses some of the factors that make this type of research challenging.
The Rational Locator: Why Travel Times Have Remained Stable
(American Planning Association, 1994) Levinson, David M; Kumar, Ajay
This paper evaluates household travel surveys for the Washington metropolitan region conducted in 1968 and 1988, and shows that commuting times remain stable or decline over the twenty year period despite an increase in average travel distance, after controlling for trip purpose and mode of travel. The average automobile work-to-home time of 32.5 minutes in both 1968 and 1988 is, moreover, very consistent with a 1957 survey showing an average time of 33.5 minutes in metropolitan Washington. Average trip speeds increased by more than 20 percent, countering the effect of increased travel distance. This change was observed during a period of rapid suburban growth in the region. With the changing distributional composition of trip origins and destinations, overall travel times have remained relatively constant. The hypothesis that jobs and housing mutually co-locate to optimize travel times is lent further support by these data.
Specifying, Estimating and Validating a New Trip Generation Model: Case Study in Montgomery County, Maryland
(Transportation Research Board, 1994) Kumar, Ajay; Levinson, David M
This paper discusses the development of an afternoon peak period trip generation model for both work and non-work trips. Three data sources are used in model development, a Household Travel Survey, a Census-Update Survey, and a Trip Generation Study. Seven one-direction trip purposes are defined, specifically accounting for stops made on the return trip from work to home. Trips are classified by origin and destination activities rather than by production and attraction, so reframing the conventional schema of home-based and non-home-based trips. Prior to estimating the model, the Household Travel Survey was demographically calibrated against the Census-Update to minimize demographic bias. A model of home-end trip generation is estimated using the Household Travel Survey as a cross-classification of the demographic factors of age and household size in addition to dwelling type. Non-home-end generation uses employment by type and population. The model was validated by comparison with a site based Trip Generation Study, which revealed an under-reporting of the relatively short and less regular shopping trips. Normalization procedures are developed to ensure that all ends of a chained trip were properly accounted for.
TH-36 Full Closure Construction: Evaluation of Traffic Operations Alternatives
(Minnesota Department of Transportation, 2010-01) Hourdos, John; Hong, Feili
According to the 2007 Urban Mobility Report, $78 billion was lost due to congestion on urban roadways. Many urban corridors around the country experience demand that is close to or greater than the available capacity. Although most agree that the transportation system has matured and that we will not build ourselves out of congestion, existing infrastructure still often requires expansion. Such expansion in an already developed system most likely does not involve new roadway construction but results in existing roadway upgrades. Such roadways normally already serve considerable demand, a fact that increases the importance of the impact to the roadway users, estimated as Road User Costs (RUCs), and raises safety concerns both for the driving public as well as for the people working on reconstruction projects. New construction methods like Full Road Closure claim to reduce RUCs as well as reduce capital costs. This project follows the first large-scale Full Closure in Minnesota in an attempt to learn from the experience and propose the most appropriate tools and methodologies for planning, staging, and executing the construction. For the latter, three traffic analysis tools are selected for estimating RUCs due to the construction project. Their effort and data requirements, as well as their accuracy is evaluated and compared to the empirical, engineering-judgment-based, method used by Mn/DOT.
Theoretical substantiation of trip length distribution for home-based work trips in urban transit systems
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2018) Horbachov, Peter; Svichynskyi, Stanislav
Modern approaches to the modeling of transport demand imply the use of calibration procedures during the origin-destination (O-D) matrix estimation or transit assignment. These procedures lead to misrepresenting generated and attracted trips or changing the trip length distribution (TLD). It means that the methods of transport planning can be improved by means of determination, validation and implementation of the TLD to calculate the O-D matrix. The analysis of research results in the field of mass transit reveals an explicit similarity between TLD in different cities and the gamma distribution. It points to general regularities in various systems of mass transit that lead to the similarity in TLD. The regularities are determined by studying the spatial distribution of mass transit stops, which are considered trip origins and destinations. The experimental research was conducted in 10 Ukrainian cities using probability theory methods.
Viewpoint: Transport's digital age transition
(Journal of Transport and Land Use, 2015) Lyons, Glenn
2014 marks the 25th birthday of the World Wide Web. We have seen some remarkable developments as part of the digital age revolution in the last quarter of a century. These have taken place concurrently with a motor age that is possibly past its prime. A number of major motor manufacturers have faced disappointing sales or financial crisis alongside several countries seeing a halt to the historic trend of growing car use. The co-existence of the motor age and the digital age prompts this paper to consider the hypothesis that society is undergoing a fundamental transition from a regime of automobility to something significantly different. The paper considers what has characterized the motor age and proceeds to examine the digital revolution and how this is changing people’s means to access people, goods, services and opportunities. The range of interactions between the motor age and the digital age are addressed, underlining the difficulty in establishing the net consequence of one for the other. The new debates concerning ‘peak car’ are considered in which the digital age is identified as potentially one key factor responsible for observed changes in car use. The paper then focuses upon a sociotechnical conceptualization of society known as the Multilayer Perspective to examine its hypothesis. Support or not for the hypothesis is not, as yet, established. Transport’s future in the digital age is uncertain and the paper sets out some views on resulting policy considerations and research needs.

University Digital Conservancy

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Browsing by Subject "Travel demand"