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| Fundamental Patterns of Travel
Behavior and their Policy Implications for Land-use, Congestion, and
Air Quality |
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Principal Investigators
MIT:
M.Ben-Akiva, A.Schafer, G.Lleras
UT: T.Furutani, K.Ohta
ETH:
A.Simma, K.Axhausen
The growth of motorized travel has
generated various external effects, including land-use, congestion,
and air quality. To cope with these problems, policy makers
worldwide need to see and understand the links between society and
our transportation system. Such complete studies have been lacking
so far and have led to hurried conclusions on how to affect
automobile usage and travel behavior in
general.
Goal/Objective
The aim of this research is
to perform a large-scale analysis of human travel behavior to help
policy makers find the appropriate policies to enable a shift
towards more sustainable travel patterns. To do so, the project has
the following specific objectives:
- To examine systematically a large number of urban and national
travel surveys that might reveal the existence of regularities in
travel demand and supply over space and time
- To indicate the extent to which travel patters differ across
different settings with respect to land use, transport
infrastructure and services as well as economic structure and
culture
- To formulate more appropriate policies to induce a shift
toward more sustainable travel
patterns
Results/Findings
The project team
has examined a large number of travel surveys and analyzed travel
patterns in different regions and countries using a standardized
methodological approach to get an overall picture of mobility. The
analysis revealed largely comparable travel behavior across very
different settings, such as income, degree of urbanization, etc.,
underlining that human behavior is very similar.
Having
learned that human travel behavior is very similar, it appears that,
in principle, one specific package of policies can result in similar
consumer reaction in different parts of the world. However, such
packages need to be fine-tuned very carefully, due to differences in
economic development and other factors.
The next steps in the
research include the following:
- Final data harmonization: Review and standardization of data
in order to develop a common data base structure to be used in the
modeling phases of the research
- Initial modeling results: Provide initial modeling results
based in the evaluation and analysis made by each participating
team over some of the cities, regions or country’s databases
- Final common models: Definition of a final model to be used in
the comparison across cities, regions, regions and countries
- Policy review and strategy: Analysis of the different
underlying forces influencing travel behavior and the implications
over land use, congestion and air policy, using the results
emerging from the models
- Final recommendations: Description of travel patterns and
recommendation of sustainable transport
policies
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