Desire to change one's multimodality and its relationship to the use of different transport means

Using data collected from French employees of a transportation institute and residents of the US San Francisco Bay Area, we operationalize a segmentation of mobility patterns based on objective, subjective, and desired amounts of mobility by various modes and overall. We especially focus on the degree of multimodality in an individual's current modal mix and desired changes to that mix through the use of a "multimodality index". The clusters that result showed some similarities and some differences across countries, where the latter are likely due to disparities in the sampling strategies and in the land use/transportation/cultural milieux. In both cases, however, the clusters have useful policy implications, enabling us, for example, to distinguish car users who might be inclined to reduce car use and increase transit use from those who are largely content with their current modal basket

An ideal journey: Making bus travel desirable

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This paper explores the ways in which people use their travel-time on local buses, and explains how this knowledge can assist with efforts in many ‘auto-centric’ societies to make bus travel more attractive and encourage a shift away from excessive private car use. Framing the discussion around the concept of an ‘ideal bus journey’, this paper examines whether travel-time activities on-board the bus give subjective value to the journey experience. Particular attention is given to emergent mobile Information and Communications Technologies, which are rapidly reconfiguring the ways in which we can inhabit and use mobile spaces such as the bus. This paper reports a novel mixed-methodology, creating a synthesised analysis of online discussions, focus groups, and a large-scale questionnaire survey of 840 bus users in Bristol, UK. The findings demonstrate that the bus is a very active space, with high levels of travel-time activity. The most popular activities on the bus are those related to relaxation and personal benefit, such as reading, listening to music, and browsing the internet. It is the passengers themselves that are largely in control of their in-vehicle experience, being able to craft a range of different positive journey experiences through travel-time activity. However, negative experiences are very common, and there is a need to challenge unfavourable public perception and media representations of bus travel to create a more positive cultural construction of the bus which would allow for the concept of an ‘ideal journey’ to be more easily realised. Passengers are the main creators of their travel-time experience, however there is much that can be done by bus operators to facilitate different types of activity and encourage a desirable public space. The overarching message is that there is a distinct opportunity to unlock travel-time activity as a ‘Unique Selling Point’ of the bus. Creating a perception of the bus journey as a desirable piece of time will allow local bus services to compete with the car on their own terms, and assist with international efforts to encourage people out of their cars and onto public transport for some trips

What affects commute mode choice: Physical neighborhood structure or preferences toward neighborhoods?

The academic literature on the impact of urban form on travel behavior has increasingly recognized that residential location choice and travel choices may be interconnected. We contribute to the understanding of this interrelation by studying to what extent commute mode choice differs by residential neighborhood and by neighborhood type dissonance—the mismatch between a commuter s current neighborhood type and her preferences regarding physical attributes of the residential neighborhood. Using data from the San Francisco Bay Area, we find that neighborhood type dissonance is statistically significantly associated with commute mode choice: dissonant urban residents are more likely to commute by private vehicle than consonant urbanites but not quite as likely as true suburbanites. However, differences between neighborhoods tend to be larger than between consonant and dissonant residents within a neighborhood. Physical neighborhood structure thus appears to have an autonomous impact on commute mode choice. The analysis also shows that the impact of neighborhood type dissonance interacts with that of commuters beliefs about automobile use, suggesting that these are to be reckoned with when studying the joint choices of residential location and commute mod

What if you live in the wrong neighborhood? The impact of residential neighborhood type dissonance on distance traveled

While urban form in general and density in particular are believed by many to significantly influence travel behavior, various recent studies have argued that the true determinants of travel patterns are attitudes rather than land use characteristics. This research builds on this notion and investigates to what extent a lackof congruence between physical neighborhood structure and preferences regarding land use near one s home location (termed residential neighborhood type dissonance or mismatch) affect distance traveled overall and by mode. A conceptual model is described in which the relationship between neighborhood type dissonance and distance traveled is embedded in a wider set of individual and household choices, and tobit models of the influence of neighborhood type mismatch are presented. The results suggest that neighborhood type mismatch should be taken into account in future research as well as in policies attempting to modify travel behavior through land use regulation

The extent and determinants of dissonance between actual and preferred residential neighborhood type

Although households' general preference for low-density residential environments is well documented in the literature, little research in geography and urban planning has explicitly inves- tigated how many and which households experience a state of mismatch in terms of land-use patterns between their preferred residential neighborhood type and the type of neighborhood where they currently reside. Using data from 1358 commuters living in three communities in the San Francisco Bay Area, in this study we find that nearly a quarter of the residents live in a neighborhood type that does not match their land-use related preferences. The results of an investigation of the determinants of such dissonance are consistent with existing knowledge about residential preferences. It is shown that single suburban dwellers and large households and families in the city are more likely to be mismatched, or experience higher levels of mismatch in terms of neighborhood type. Further, the extent of mismatch is clearly related to automobile orientation, as well as to lifestyles and personality traits. The results suggest that policies aiming to attract a diverse market to neotraditional, high- density neighborhoods may not be as effective as decisionmakers and planners hope. If a broad range of households is artificially attracted to such new developments (for example, through providing financial advantages or other policy incentives), this might on average result in lower levels of residential satisfaction, higher residential mobility, lower sense of community, and enduring auto dependency. On the other hand, it is encouraging to see that there is also a substantial proportion of suburban dwellers preferring high-density environments. Relaxation of land-use laws in existing suburban communities might be successful in reducing residential neighborhood type dissonance for these types of suburban dwellers, but perhaps at the cost of increasing dissonance for the suburban- ites preferring lower densities. It would be valuable to investigate whether there is a mix of densities and uses that would optimally satisfy both types of preference

Measuring the Measurable: Why can’t we Agree on the Number of Telecommuters in the U.S.?

Telecommuting, teleworking, data quality, measurement issues, social science data, transportation impacts of telecommuting,

Understanding Travel Time Expenditures Around the World: Exploring the Notion of a Travel Time Frontier

Travel behavior researchers have been intrigued by the amount of time that people allocate to travel in a day, i.e., the daily travel time expenditure, commonly referred to as a “travel time budget”. Explorations into the notion of a travel time budget have once again resurfaced in the context of activity-based and time use research in travel behavior modeling. This paper revisits the issue by developing the notion of a travel time frontier (TTF) that is distinct from the actual travel time expenditure or budget of an individual. The TTF is defined in this paper as an intrinsic maximum amount of time that people are willing to allocate for travel. It is treated as an unobserved frontier that influences the actual travel time expenditure measured in travel surveys. Using travel survey datasets from around the world (i.e., US, Switzerland and India), this paper sheds new light on daily travel time expenditures by modeling the unobserved TTF and comparing these frontiers across international contexts. The stochastic frontier modeling methodology is employed to model the unobserved TTF as a production frontier. Separate models are estimated for commuter and non-commuter samples to recognize the differing constraints between these market segments. Comparisons across the international contexts show considerable differences in average unobserved TTF values. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007Travel time frontier, Travel time budget, Travel time expenditure, International comparison, Stochastic frontier model, Activity-travel behavior,