Searching for the Rail Bonus

The inherent superiority of rail-based public transport options over bus-based alternatives, all other things being equal, has been stipulated in the literature and in the public policy discussion for some time. The exact strength of any such rail bonus is important to a public transport operator which has to consider the replacement of rail-based services by bus services. The public transport operator of the city of Dresden (DVB), while generally upgrading its services, has to consider this option, in particular where the continuing tram operation would require a costly rehabilitation of the tracks. The measurement of any such systematic preference for rail-based modes is difficult, as is requires either a before-and-after study of such a switch, controlled for the other relevant service attributes, e.g. frequency, speed, reliability, price, route, etc., or a study of a network, in which rail- and road-based modes offer comparable types of services, with bus services inparticular not restricted to feeder services to rail/tram lines. Both are rare for obvious reasons. A recent service change of the DVB offered the opportunity to look at the issue in detail. A series of surveys were undertaken for this purpose before and after: A one-day travel diary (including a household questionnaire)  A survey of the image of the services A between-mode stated preference exercise focusing on the choice between public transport and private motorised transport where public transport was provided by either bus or tram (7 choice situations) A within-mode stated preference exercise looking at the trade-offs between public transport modes, in particular levels of comfort, travel times and transfers (7 choice situations). The paper reports detailed results from this study addressing the differences in preferences between the waves (effects of familiarity with an alternative) from both separate and joint stated preference and stated preference/revealed preference models. The modelling so far indicates a consistent, but weak preference for the rail option through a higher value-of-time for rail usage, higher valuation of new rail vehicles in comparison to new busses, although they are partially balanced by a higher transfer penalty. &nbsp

Fatigue in long-duration travel diaries

This paper introduces a new long-duration travel diary survey undertaken in a small town and rural environment, which complements the existing urban Mobidrive survey of 1999. Policy-making is dominated by the 1-day view of the world provided by the usual diaries. Long-duration surveys can balance this by highlighting the strong intrapersonal variance in choices, modes used and other aspects of travel behaviour. They also allow us to gain an understanding of the activity space of the travellers. The new 2003 Thurgau data followed the protocol of the earlier study, but developed the set of questions further. These new questions concerned the social context of respondents as well as trip-related items, such as planning horizon of the activity, previous frequency of visits or the groups involved in the trip or activity. The descriptive and model-based analysis of the data showed that respondent fatigue is not an issue in either survey. Where significant deviations from a steady number of reported trips were found, they showed positive tendencies, i.e. learning. The skill accrued in the intensive round of contacts between respondent and interviewer is significant. Papers on travel diaries tend not to report interviewer effects, although their impacts are clearly discernable. The analysis shows that the four interviewers employed in this survey had a substantial effect on the number of reported trip

Collecting data on leisure travel: The link between leisure contacts and social interactions

The aim of a new survey project is to collect data on the link between leisure contacts and leisure activities. The paper introduces briefly into former studies that applied the methods of social network analysis in transport planning. Using these projects as starting points the methodology and background of the new project are presented in detail. This is followed by first descriptive analyses checking how representative the data are for the Swiss population. The paper finishes by giving an outlook on further work and next steps to analyze the data

Reliability in the German value of time study

The German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure is currently preparing the 2015 Federal Transport Investment Plan. As part of this, it is updating the overall methodology of its cost-benefit analysis meaning values of both reliability (VOR) and travel time (VOT) for personal and business travel will be estimated. While the VOTs will replace a set of existing values, the VOR will be estimated for the first time as they are not incorporated in the standard appraisal yet. The data collection adopted a two-stage approach: first respondents reported about current trips (revealed preference), which were then systematically varied to be the basis for stated preference experiments. This paper presents the findings of estimating the VOR. In the SP experiments the reliability of the travel modes was presented with different formats. The final model formulation differs in the definition of reliability for private and public transport. For car trips, saving travel time is “worthier” to the respondents than reducing the variability. The calculated VOR for the mean expected unscheduled delay of public transport trips are slightly lower than the VOTs which means that the reliability is here less important to the respondents than relevant travel time saving. One minute of mean expected unscheduled delay and one minute of standard deviation are almost equivalent to one minute of travel time saving (reliability ratio). As this has been the first official estimation of the value of reliability and time for Germany, the values should be reconsidered and updated on a regular basis

Locative Media and Sociability:Using Location-Based Social Networks to Coordinate Everyday Life

Foursquare was a mobile social networking application that enabled people to share location with friends in the form of “check-ins.” The visualization of surrounding known social connections as well as unknown others has the potential to impact how people coordinate social encounters and forge new social ties. While many studies have explored mobile phones and sociability, there is a lack of empirical research examining location-based social network’s (LSBNs) from a sociability perspective. Drawing on a dataset of original qualitative research with a range of Foursquare users, the paper examines the application in the context of social coordination and sociability in three ways. First, the paper explores if Foursquare is used to organize certain social encounters, and if so, why. Second, the paper examines the visualization of surrounding social connections and whether this leads to “serendipitous encounters.” Lastly, the paper examines whether the use of Foursquare can produce new social relationships

Reconstructing the 2003/2004 H3N2 influenza epidemic in Switzerland with a spatially explicit, individual-based model

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Simulation models of influenza spread play an important role for pandemic preparedness. However, as the world has not faced a severe pandemic for decades, except the rather mild H1N1 one in 2009, pandemic influenza models are inherently hypothetical and validation is, thus, difficult. We aim at reconstructing a recent seasonal influenza epidemic that occurred in Switzerland and deem this to be a promising validation strategy for models of influenza spread. METHODS: We present a spatially explicit, individual-based simulation model of influenza spread. The simulation model bases upon (i) simulated human travel data, (ii) data on human contact patterns and (iii) empirical knowledge on the epidemiology of influenza. For model validation we compare the simulation outcomes with empirical knowledge regarding (i) the shape of the epidemic curve, overall infection rate and reproduction number, (ii) age-dependent infection rates and time of infection, (iii) spatial patterns. RESULTS: The simulation model is capable of reproducing the shape of the 2003/2004 H3N2 epidemic curve of Switzerland and generates an overall infection rate (14.9 percent) and reproduction numbers (between 1.2 and 1.3), which are realistic for seasonal influenza epidemics. Age and spatial patterns observed in empirical data are also reflected by the model: Highest infection rates are in children between 5 and 14 and the disease spreads along the main transport axes from west to east. CONCLUSIONS: We show that finding evidence for the validity of simulation models of influenza spread by challenging them with seasonal influenza outbreak data is possible and promising. Simulation models for pandemic spread gain more credibility if they are able to reproduce seasonal influenza outbreaks. For more robust modelling of seasonal influenza, serological data complementing sentinel information would be beneficia