Development of a Paratransit Microsimulation Patron Accessibility Analysis Tool for Small and Medium Sized Communities

ABSTRACT Paratransit is a critical form of transportation for mobility-impaired, low income, and small/ medium sized communities. Paratransit systems face many challenges that restrict how well they can serve their community, including limited funding, aging fleets, limited to no level of service standard assessments, and few practical modeling/planning practices. This paper discusses a transferable paratransit microsimulation patron accessibility analysis tool designed to address these challenges. The tool calculates paratransit patron accessibility (defined as paratransit patrons' perceived ease of access to reach desired activities and destinations) by simulating and measuring daily paratransit patron travel patterns based on service fleet and region information. The tool further allows providers to evaluate patron accessibility for any combination of population groups, travel purposes, and times of day. Transit providers can use the tool to determine how well paratransit patrons are served and the most efficient ways to improve service. The microsimulation framework, including the system of simulation models, the supporting data, and application to Brownsville, Texas are described in detail. LaMondia and Bhat

An annual time use model for vacation travel

Vacation travel constitutes about 25% of all long-distance travel, and about 80% of this vacation travel is undertaken using the automobile. This paper contributes to the vacation travel literature by examining how households decide what vacation travel activities to participate in on an annual basis, and to what extent, given the total annual vacation travel time that is available at their disposal. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive modelling exercise in the literature to undertake such a vacation travel time-use analysis to examine purpose-specific time investments. A mixed multiple discrete-continuous extreme value (MDCEV) model structure that is consistent with the notion of “optimal arousal” in vacation type time-use decisions is used in the analysis. The data used is drawn from the 1995 American Travel Survey (ATS). The empirical results show that most households participate in different types of vacation travel over the course of a year, and they spend significantly different amounts of time on each type of vacation travel. The model developed here can be used to predict the changes in vacation travel timeuse patterns due to the changes in demographic, economic, and residence characteristics over time. Such predictions, in turn, can be used to examine the changing vacation travel needs of households, so that appropriate service and transportation facilities may be planned

A Conceptual and Methodological Framework of Leisure Activity Loyalty Accommodating the Travel Context

At the time of publication J.J. LaMondia was at Auburn University and C.R. Bhat was at the University of Texas at Austin.As leisure travel continues to grow, it has become a critical subject for planners and decisionmakers since it significantly impacts regional economic and social development as well as contributes to emission levels and congestion. Despite being a significant percentage of our travel, however, leisure travel behavior is still not very well understood. The goal of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of leisure activity participation by considering leisure activity loyalty within the travel context. In particular, this study focuses on one specific dimension of travel context: travel extent (i.e. whether an individual participates in a leisure activity on a daily versus a long-distance basis). As such, this paper first introduces a unified conceptual framework for measuring leisure activity loyalties within a travel context, based on two distinct dynamics of leisure loyalty behavior - destination attachment and activity involvement. Additionally, this paper uses a unique 2001 NHTS dataset comprised of households’ daily and long-distance leisure activities to undertake a unique empirical analysis of five distinct leisure activities using the conceptual framework and a copula-based model methodology. The findings confirmed that households demonstrate significant loyalties to travel contexts across all leisure activities, especially resting and sightseeing.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

A behavioral framework for tourism travel time use and activity patterns

textAmerican households spend over $30 billion on tourism and take over 177 million long-distance leisure trips each year. These trips, and the subsequent vehicle miles traveled, have a significant impact on the transportation systems at major destinations across the country, especially those destinations that are still improving their transportation systems. Surprisingly, not much is known related to this type of travel. This dissertation expands the current knowledge of tourism travel behavior, in terms of how people make decisions regarding long-distance leisure activities and time use. Specifically, this dissertation develops and comprehensively examines a behavioral framework for household tourism time use and activity patterns. This framework combines (and builds upon) theory and methods from both transportation and tourism research fields such that it can be used to improve tourism demand modeling. This framework takes an interdisciplinary approach to describe how long distance leisure travelers allocate and maximize their time use across various types of activities. It also considers the many levels of tourism time use and activity patterns, including the structuring the broad annual leisure activity and time budget, forming individual tourism trips within the defined budget, and selecting specific activities and timing during each distinct tourism trip. Subsequently, this dissertation will additionally apply the time use and activity participation behavioral framework to four critical tourism research topics to demonstrate how the tourism behavioral framework can effectively be used to provide behavioral insights into some of the most commonly studied critical tourism issues. These application topics include household participation in broad tourism travel activities, travel parties’ tourism destination and travel mode selection, individuals’ loyalty towards daily and tourism activities, and travel parties’ participation in combinations of specific tourism trip activities. These application studies incorporate a variety of data sources, decision makers, study scales, situation-appropriate modeling techniques, and economic/individual/environmental factors to capture all aspects of the decision and travel activity-making process.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

Modeling side stop behavior during long distance travel using the 1995 American Travel Survey (ATS)

This paper examines how many and the most common type of side stops a traveler or travel party makes during long-distance travel of over 100 miles or more. The research uses the 1995 American Travel Survey (ATS) because it is one of the few data sources that collects information on stops and side trips for long-distance trips. The paper utilizes two models to estimate side stop behavior: 1) an ordered probit formulation for modeling the number of side trips during long distance travel, and 2) a mixed multinomial logit formulation for modeling the most common side stop purpose during long-distance travel. A variety of variables, including trip and household characteristics, are considered in the model specification. The factors that play the largest role in determining side stop behavior are the primary purpose of the long-distance trip, whether the trip is a planned vacation or not, and the ethnicity of the travelers.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

An annual time use model for domestic vacation travel

At the time of publication Jeffrey LaMondia and Chandra R. Bhat were at the University of Texas at Austin and David A. Hensher was at the University of Sydney.Vacation travel in the USA, which constitutes about 25% of all long- distance travel, has been increasing consistently over the past two decades and warrants careful attention in the context of regional and statewide transportation air quality planning and policy analysis, as well as tourism marketing and service provision strategies. This paper contributes to the vacation travel literature by examining how households decide what vacation travel activities to participate in on an annual basis, and to what extent, given the total annual vacation travel time that is available at their disposal. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive modeling exercise in the literature to undertake such a vacation travel time-use analysis to examine purpose-specific time investments. A mixed multiple discrete-continuous extreme value (MDCEV) model structure that is consistent with the notion of "optimal arousal" in vacation type time-use decisions is used in the analysis. The data for the empirical analysis is drawn from the 1995 American Travel Survey (ATS). The results show that most households participate in different types of domestic vacation travel over the course of a year, and spend significantly different amounts of time on each type of vacation travel, based on household demographics, economic characteristics, and residence characteristics.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

A Study of Visitors' Leisure Travel Behavior in the Northwest Territories of Canada

At the time of publication J.J. LaMondia was at Auburn University; and C.R. Bhat was at the University of Texas at Austin.As long-distance leisure travel has shifted to being broader and more of an amalgam of different activity types, it has become critical for planners to understand what combinations of activities individuals will most likely participate in during a leisure trip. Accordingly, this study models travelers' participation in any combination of eight leisure trip activities. The analysis utilizes activity participation data from a tourist exit survey collected from the Northwest Territories in Canada. A Multivariate Binary Probit model system, with correlation across every pair of leisure activities, is estimated using a Composite Marginal Likelihood method. The empirical analysis results emphasize that travelers often combine specific sets of leisure activities together during tourism travel. However, which sets of activities get paired together depends greatly on travelers' experience, travel companions, and individual concerns.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin

Development of a paratransit microsimulation patron accessibility analysis tool for small and medium sized communities

Paratransit is a critical form of transportation for mobility-impaired, low income, and small/ medium sized communities. Paratransit systems face many challenges that restrict how well they can serve their community, including limited funding, aging fleets, limited to no level of service standard assessments, and few practical modeling/planning practices. This paper discusses a transferable paratransit microsimulation patron accessibility analysis tool designed to address these challenges. The tool calculates paratransit patron accessibility (defined as paratransit patrons' perceived ease of access to reach desired activities and destinations) by simulating and measuring daily paratransit patron travel patterns based on service fleet and region information. The tool further allows providers to evaluate patron accessibility for any combination of population groups, travel purposes, and times of day. Transit providers can use the tool to determine how well paratransit patrons are served and the most efficient ways to improve service. The microsimulation framework, including the system of simulation models, the supporting data, and application to Brownsville, Texas are described in detail.Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineerin