Daily Commute Research Articles

Exploring the factors influencing the use of public transport by commuters living in networks of small cities and towns

The use of public transport is directly associated with a reduced environmental impact for satisfying daily mobility needs. Current research has focused on identifying the factors affecting the use of public transport, elements such as age, car ownership, travel distance, or parking availability having been associated with a direct impact on an individual’s transport mode choice. However, most of these studies focused on the travel behaviour of individuals living in large cities, where the population density is high, and public transport is usually more developed than in small cities and towns. The present study provides additional insights into the impact of eleven different factors on the use of public transport by employees living and working in networks of small cities and towns in Northern Europe. The study uses ordered logistic regression to analyse the data collected in 2019 through a regional travel survey conducted in Agder, Norway. The results reveal that the choice of public transport as a daily commute mode is significantly affected by car ownership, distance to work, parking availability, and ticket prices. Additionally, the results indicate that the odds of employees using public transport increase when the respondents do not have persons in care. On the other hand, factors such as low bus frequency and long walking distances to the home bus stop show a negative impact on the use of public transport. Based on these results, regional and local policy actions are proposed.

Impact of one-way streets on the asymmetry of the shortest commuting routes

On a daily commute, the shortest route from home to work rarely overlaps completely the shortest way back. We analyze this asymmetry for several cities and show that it exists even without traffic, due to a non-negligible fraction of one-way streets. For different pairs of origin-destination $(\mathrm{OD})$, we compute the log-ratio $r=ln({\ensuremath{\ell}}_{\mathrm{D}}/{\ensuremath{\ell}}_{\mathrm{O}})$, where ${\ensuremath{\ell}}_{\mathrm{O}}$ and ${\ensuremath{\ell}}_{\mathrm{D}}$ are the lengths of the shortest routes from $\mathrm{O}$ to $\mathrm{D}$ and from $\mathrm{D}$ to $\mathrm{O}$, respectively. While its average is zero, the amplitude of the fluctuations decays as a power law of the $\mathrm{OD}$ shortest path length $r\ensuremath{\sim}{\ensuremath{\ell}}_{\mathrm{O}}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\beta}}$. Similarly, the fraction of one-way streets in a shortest route also decays as ${\ensuremath{\ell}}_{\mathrm{O}}^{\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}}$. Based on semianalytic arguments, we show that $\ensuremath{\beta}=(1+\ensuremath{\alpha})/2$. Thus, the value of the exponent $\ensuremath{\beta}$ is related to correlations in the structure of the underlying street network.

Livestreaming: exploring the obstacles and possibilities of digital usage for people with disabilities

The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) has had increasing influence, both positive and negative, on people with disabilities. How does ICT impact people with disabilities and what are the subjective experiences, feelings, attitudes, and understanding of people with disabilities under this influence? To address these questions, we conducted experiential and experimental research – one of the authors, Hui Heng, a visually impaired person, conducted a total of ten livestreams of his daily commute – to explore and experience vividly the obstacles and opportunities of ICT usage in a creative way. We argue that this experiential and experimental livestreaming demonstrates people with disabilities’ right to be seen and people without disabilities’ right to observe and recognize the diversity of our society.

Air pollution exposure monitoring using portable low-cost air quality sensors

Urban environments with a high degree of industrialization are infested with hazardous chemicals and airborne pollutants. These pollutants can have devastating effects on human health, causing both acute and chronic diseases such as respiratory infections, lung cancer, and heart disease. Air pollution monitoring is vital not only to citizens, warning them on the health risks of air pollutants, but also to policy-makers, assisting them on drafting regulations and laws that aim at minimizing those health risks. Currently, air pollution monitoring predominantly relies on expensive high-end static sensor stations. These stations produce only aggregated information about air pollutants, and are unable to capture variations in individual's air pollution exposure. As an alternative, this article develops a citizen-based air pollution monitoring system that captures individual exposure levels to air pollutants during daily indoor and outdoor activities. We present a low-cost portable sensor and carry out a measurement campaign using the sensors to demonstrate the validity and benefits of citizen-based pollution measurements. Specifically, we (i) successfully classify the data into indoor and outdoor, and (ii) validate the consistency and accuracy of our outdoor-classified data to the measurements of a high-end reference monitoring station. Our experimental results further prove the effectiveness of our campaign by (i) providing fine-grained air pollution insights over a wide geographical area, (ii) identifying probable causes of air pollution dependent on the area, and (iii) providing citizens with personalized insights about air pollutants in their daily commute.

Commuting time and sickness absence of US workers

This paper analyzes the relationship between commuting time and days of sickness absence of US workers. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for the years 2011 to 2017, we find that a 1% increase in the daily commute of workers is associated with an increase of 0.018 and 0.027% in the days of sickness absence per year of male and female workers, respectively. These results are robust for women when sample selection, missing variables, and health status are explored. Further exploration of this relationship shows that the positive relationship between commuting and sickness absence is concentrated in urban areas only, and is present in the intensive margin (hours) for men and the extensive margin (participation) for women. By uncovering how commuting time is related to sickness absenteeism, we contribute to the literature on the negative correlation between commuting and workers’ health and well-being.

Planning Intervention for Development for Hinjewadi and Its Surrounding Area

Abstract: The IT industry was welcomed with open arms into the city as per the IT policy of the State government of Maharashtra. Pune is widely regarded as the second major "IT hub of India" and the top automobile and manufacturing hub of India. The main objective of this Thesis is to assess the extent of development at Hinjewadi and surrounding areas and accordingly propose planning interventions with respect to development of the area. Hinjewadi IT Park is proposed and developed by Hinjewadi MIDC. Existence of IT Park offers employment and development opportunities at city level and local level. But it also offers some challenges in development. Hinjewadi comes under PMRDA as it is not a part of Pune Municipal Corporation and Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation. Hinjewadi needs a special attention because of its IT hub. There are various authorities in Hinjewadi namely, Hinjewadi gram panchayat, Hinjewadi MIDC, Software Technology Parks of India, Hinjewadi Industries Association, IT employees and local residents of Hinjewadi. All of these authorities play an important role in development of Hinjawadi. These authorities are not interdependent on each other and are confined to their specific approach towards development. They lack in coordination and holistic approach of development. Major issue is faced by daily commuters from various parts of the cities. The IT Park is challenged by chaotic traffic, insufficient security arrangements. These various authorities need to be brought under one umbrella that will be a parent organization to develop holistic approach and better future development. The proposal would be to form an urban local body for Hinjewadi and surrounding area. The area will be delineated with possible development possible for Residential - Commercial development in the area. Keywords: Planning Intervention, Extent of development, daily commuters, holistic approach, IT Park.

Multi-locality in rural areas – an underestimated phenomenon

ABSTRACT Multi-locality – a lifestyle involving living in several places – is very diverse. Involving temporary presences and absences, it can impact local communities and the environment. This paper looks at the effects of multi-local lifestyles in three rural districts in Lower Saxony, Germany, evaluating quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews with multi-local residents, company representatives and officials. The methods are supplemented by visualizations and reflexive photography. Multi-locals can be seen as both an opportunity and a risk for civic involvement: multi-locality makes it possible to avoid relocation, but the limited periods of presence make it unlikely for multi-locals to become involved locally. Likewise, multi-locality impacts the environment, leading to an increasing volume of traffic and higher land consumption, even if it less significant than the impact of daily commuting.

Transporting the “Bus Stop Republic” – resilience and apartheid’s transport infrastructure, 1979 to present times

ABSTRACT This article examines how PUTCO buses formed part of apartheid infrastructure by transporting commuters between the Bantustan of KwaNdebele and Pretoria. It discusses the arduous conditions of this daily commute, as well as the ways in which PUTCO buses became central to mobilising against KwaNdebele’s independence in 1986. More specifically, this article demonstrates how the daily exhaustion of commuters, the poor design of these buses, their lack of safety and high fares in the 1970s and 1980s have continued into the post-apartheid present. Not only does this demonstrate the resilience of apartheid infrastructure – seen as a form of resoluteness and resistance to change – but it also highlights the resilient citizenship required from commuters in the post-apartheid period. Resilient citizenship – where responsibilised citizen-subjects in South Africa are required to be adaptable to apartheid infrastructure – has emerged through the state’s embrace of a neoliberal regime. Characterised by privatisation and reducing state expenditures, this regime has, in relation to apartheid’s infrastructure, given rise to techniques of government that shift responsibility onto individuals by imposing strategies of adaptability. Former residents of KwaNdebele, black women in particular, are thus required to be adaptable to PUTCO’s perilous routes and the poor design of the buses.

Weather Conditions and Daily Commuting

Weather Conditions and Daily Commuting

Travel Time Prediction Using Hybridized Deep Feature Space and Machine Learning Based Heterogeneous Ensemble

Travel Time Prediction (TTP) has become an essential service that people use in daily commutes. With the precise TTP, individuals, logistic companies, and transport authorities can better manage their activities and operations. This paper presents a novel Hybridized Deep Feature Space (HDFS) based TTP ensemble model (HDFS-TTP) for accurate travel time prediction. In the first step, extensive endogenous and exogenous data sources are augmented with traffic data obtained using sensors. Next, we used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Deep Stacked Auto-Encoder (DSAE) for feature reduction. We generated feature spaces of deep learning models, namely Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), and fed them to a model based on Support Vector Regressor (SVR) for predicting travel times. Two best-performing models are selected, and their feature spaces are hybridized to boost feature space. On this boosted feature space, we employed SVR for final prediction. Our proposed HDFS-TTP ensemble can learn complex non-linearities in traffic data with the varying architectural design. The performance of our proposed HDFS-TTP ensemble using hybridized and boosted feature spaces showed significant improvement in test data in terms of Root Mean Square Error (62.27 ± 1.58), Mean Absolute Error (13.38 ± 1.09), Maximum Absolute Error (104.66 ± 2.77), Mean Absolute Percentage Error (2.50 ± 0.03), and Coefficient of determination (0.99714 ± 0.00044).

Social, Biological and Behavioral Factors Associated with Social Jet Lag and Sleep Duration in University Students from a Low Urbanized City.

IntroductionSleep deprivation and social jet lag are observed in college students from highly urbanized cities. However, does these consequences also present in college students from a low urbanization city?ObjectiveTo evaluate the prevalence and social, biological and behavioral factors associated with sleep deprivation and social jet lag in university students from a low urbanized city of Brazil.MethodsA total of 298 university students participated in the study through application of the Health and Sleep and the Munich Chronotype Questionnaires. Multiple linear regression with stepwise-forward method was adopted to assess the associations of the factors with the outcome variables.ResultsDoing leisure activities (LA) (B = 23.24) and academic demand (AD) before bedtime (B = 19.51), both on the weekend, and doing household chores (HC) before bedtime (B = 17.61) in the week were associated with an increase in social jet lag, while stimulating drinks (SD) were associated with a decrease (B = −15.17). Shorter sleep duration in the week was related to chronotype (B = −0.56), male (B = −26.51), doing LA (B = −27.63), poor perception about sleeping place (PPSP) (B = −43.02) and daily commute (B = −68.97). The shorter sleep duration in the weekend was associated to male (B = −36.36), PPSP (B = −58.16), have recreational and religious activities (B = −31.11), doing LA (B = −25.10) and AD (B = −23.60). Just chronotype was associated with longer sleep duration in the weekend (B = 0.25).ConclusionUniversity students from a low urbanized city present social jet lag, shorter sleep duration on school days and longer sleep duration on free days as a result of biological and social factors, and mostly behavioral factors.

The 15-minute city: interpreting the model to bring out urban resiliencies

In a globally connected world and increasingly smart cities, the demand for living in a physical neighborhood where one can walk and cycle among familiar people and a variety of services is always alive. It is a quality of life which meets the deep desire of community and place identity. In this regard, the 15-minutes city is the contemporary version of the classical “human measure”. The model offers a refreshing chrono-centric vision for the city that prioritizes people’s time, energy and physio-psychological health by relieving their daily commutes. The recent pandemic clearly showed this potential; the daily outdoor movement by soft mobility allowed for social life even during lockdown periods. The paper is subdivided into two main components: a theoretical discussion of the 15-minute city model as part of a broader sustainable urban planning narrative, and a practical application mapping the potentials of Milan as a 15-minute city, focusing on population distribution and urban fabric structure as a measure of performance evaluation. The emergence of the 15-minute model rebalances the building volume concentration of the consolidated Transit Oriented Development paradigm; suggesting an innovative and more articulated vision. The 15-minute approach, rooted in the organic planning of the ‘60, is pushed by the covid-19 emergency, making treasure of the experience of urban regeneration masterplans of the last decade. The approach falls in line with real estate strategies for place making, which aim to create new sustainable urban districts that are pedestrian oriented and carbon free. After interpreting the international framework of urbanism trends with respect to the 15-minute model, the paper focuses on the Milan case. The potentials for neighborhoods across the city of Milan is investigated to conform to an inclusive 15-minute city model, using fully-fledged and innovative mapping of proximity. This analysis aims to explore the resilience of urban resources to support walkable living environments with a guaranteed basic level of accessibility to daily needs by walking. The support to this model offered by soft mobility modes and micro-mobility devices is also raised. The results show, in a number of urban neighborhoods, a limited level of walkability although related to a spatial city structure which is able to be regenerated as a dense and effective network of 15-minute neighborhoods through tactical urbanism actions on existing open spaces and soft mobility policies, combined with long term strategies (infrastructure capacity and digital upgrading). It is a first methodological test which opens up the research towards a new inclusive concept of accessibility.

Pothole Detection Using Deep Learning: A Real‐Time and AI‐on‐the‐Edge Perspective

Asphalt pavement distresses are the major concern of underdeveloped and developed nations for the smooth running of daily life commute. Among various pavement failures, numerous research can be found on pothole detection as they are injurious to automobiles and passengers that may turn into an accident. This work is intended to explore the potential of deep learning models and deploy three superlative deep learning models on edge devices for pothole detection. In this work, we have exploited the AI kit (OAK‐D) on a single‐board computer (Raspberry Pi) as an edge platform for pothole detection. Detailed real‐time performance comparison of state‐of‐the‐art deep learning models and object detection frameworks (YOLOv1, YOLOv2, YOLOv3, YOLOv4, Tiny‐YOLOv4, YOLOv5, and SSD‐mobilenetv2) for pothole detection is presented. The experimentation is performed on an image dataset with pothole in diverse road conditions and illumination variations as well as on real‐time video captured through a moving vehicle. The Tiny‐YOLOv4, YOLOv4, and YOLOv5 evince the highest mean average precision (mAP) of 80.04%, 85.48%, and 95%, respectively, on the image set, thus proving the strength of the proposed approach for pothole detection and deployed on OAK‐D for real‐time detection. The study corroborated Tiny‐YOLOv4 as the befitted model for real‐time pothole detection with 90% detection accuracy and 31.76 FPS.

The Effect of Diesel Tax Rates on the Daily Commuting of Us Workers: An Effective Instrument to Promote Sustainable Mobility?

The Effect of Diesel Tax Rates on the Daily Commuting of Us Workers: An Effective Instrument to Promote Sustainable Mobility?

Exploring Perception of Quality of Life in Urban Daily Commuting for Sustainable Urban Transport in Bangkok, Thailand

Exploring Perception of Quality of Life in Urban Daily Commuting for Sustainable Urban Transport in Bangkok, Thailand

The Effect of Diesel Tax Rates on the Daily Commuting of Us Workers: An Effective Instrument to Promote Sustainable Mobility?

The Effect of Diesel Tax Rates on the Daily Commuting of Us Workers: An Effective Instrument to Promote Sustainable Mobility?

The Effect of Diesel Tax Rates on the Daily Commuting of Us Workers: An Effective Instrument to Promote Sustainable Mobility?

The Effect of Diesel Tax Rates on the Daily Commuting of Us Workers: An Effective Instrument to Promote Sustainable Mobility?

CHARACTERISTICS OF INFORMAL TRANSPORT IN PAKISTAN: A CASE STUDY OF PESHAWAR CITY

Informal public transport serves most of the daily commuters in cities of the developing world; its effectiveness is due to the on-demand service, mobility, flexibility, and the fact that this service has already infiltrated the transport network of cities where the government has failed to provide mass transit, has inadequately provided it, or was far too late to provide it. Although this service provides mobility services to a huge chunk of commuters daily, it is associated with ills like safety concerns, source of noise, air and visual pollution, lack of regulation and accountability. This overshadows the benefits and the value that the service brings to the transport network. The true potential of the service cannot be realized without research on the very characteristics of the informal transport service and the modes of transport used in the service. To better understand the informal transport system, empirical research was conducted in Peshawar city. The results give important first-time insights into the transport network's characteristics and create a knowledge base about the modes used in informal transport in Peshawar. There is no current knowledge about these aspects of the public transport sector, which is a testament to the study's novelty. This paper will also shed light on the road safety associated with the different modes of the informal transport system. The study shows that even though the informal transport system does not comply with regulations on operations and safety, it is an important part of the city's transport network and a major part of the social-economic life of its citizen. Thus, it cannot be uprooted and must be integrated into a formal transport network with compliance with regulations in operations, vehicular conditions, and integrated systems and infrastructure.

CHOICE OF TRANSPORTATION MODE – A THEORETICAL STUDY

Inefficient public transport is considered a normal problem in any city or country. The motivations of transportation users determine their choice of transportation mode. This paper is aimed to identify the reasons behind the choice of transportation mode among daily commuters. Specifically, this paper observes the quality of public transport offered towards the users and how it affects their decision on the transportation mode. To understand their motivations, a literature review study has been conducted to interpret their preferences on the quality of public transport. The result shows the indicators that can be measured in the quality of public transport. Several past kinds of research have discussed the measures in solving issues related to public transport to encourage people to use the service given.

Assessing Strength of Plastic Paving Blocks for Construction of Non-Motorised Transport Facilities.

Walking remains the oldest and most common mode of transport making up a portion if not most or all our daily commute. However, infrastructure developments in our urban areas have a bias towards motorised transport leading to pedestrians and cyclists being the most affected in road incidents. Increasing non-motorised transport facilities in our urban centres would increase levels of walkability, reduce the number of crashes involving non-motorised transport users, reduce traffic congestion, noise and air pollution making them sustainable and more liveable. Three hundred million tonnes of plastic waste are produced annually in the world with Kenya contributing 407,506 tonnes. The waste produced shall continue to increase with increasing population, urbanisation and development. The non-biodegradability of plastic makes proper disposal of plastic waste a menace and due to widespread littering, plastic waste has become a common sight in our urban and rural areas. The conventional materials used for the construction of walkways and cycle lanes, asphalt and concrete are most ideal for the motorised transport pavements. Plastic paving blocks can be affordable, readily available and environmentally friendly making a suitable alternate construction material if adopted. This study assessed the strength of plastic paving blocks for use in the construction of walkways and cycle lanes; by undertaking a tensile strength test according to SANS 1058:2021 on samples provided by Corec Kenya. The samples satisfied all of the strength specifications and from this it can be recommended that the plastic paving blocks can be used on low traffic pavements such as walkways and cycle lanes.