Different Groups Of Travelers Research Articles

The Influence of Introducing Autonomous Vehicles on Conventional Transport Modes and Travel Time

Introducing autonomous vehicles (AVs) on the market is likely to bring changes in the mobility of travelers. In this work, extensive research is conducted to study the impact of different levels of automation on the mobility of people, and full driving automation needs further study because it is still under development. The impacts of AVs on travel behavior can be studied by integrating AVs into activity-based models. The contribution of this study is the estimation of AVs’ impacts on travelers’ mobility when different travel demands are provided, and also the estimation of AVs’ impact on the modal share considering the different willingness of pay to travel by AVs. This study analyses the potential impacts of AVs on travel behavior by investigating a sample of 8500 travelers who recorded their daily activity plans in Budapest, Hungary. Three scenarios are derived to study travel behavior and to find the impacts of the AVs on the conventional transport modes. The scenarios include (1) a simulation of the existing condition, (2) a simulation of AVs as a full replacement for conventional transport modes, and (3) a simulation of the AVs with conventional transport modes concerning different marginal utilities of travel time in AVs. The simulations are done by using the Multi-Agent Transport Simulation (MATSim) open-source software, which applies a co-evolutionary optimization algorithm. Using the scenarios in the study, we develop a base model, determine the required fleet size of AVs needed to fulfill the demand of the different groups of travelers, and predict the new modal shares of the transport modes when AVs appear on the market. The results demonstrate that the travelers are exposed to a reduction in travel time once conventional transport modes are replaced by AVs. The impact of the value of travel time (VOT) on the usage of AVs and the modal share is demonstrated. The decrease in the VOT of AVs increases the usage of AVs, and it particularly decreases the usage of cars even more than other transport modes. AVs strongly affect the public transport when the VOT of AVs gets close to the VOT of public transport. Finally, the result shows that 1 AV can replace 7.85 conventional vehicles with acceptable waiting time.

Leveraging Individual and Collective Regularity to Profile and Segment User Locations from Mobile Phone Data

The dynamic monitoring of home and workplace distribution is a fundamental building block for improving location-based service systems in fast-developing cities worldwide. Inferring these places is challenging; existing approaches rely on labor-intensive and untimely survey data or ad hoc heuristic assignment rules based on the frequency of appearance at given locations. Motivated by the regularities in human behavior, we propose a novel method to infer the home, workplace, and third place based on an individual’s spatial-temporal patterns inferred from Call Detail Records. To capture the individual regularity, our method develops, for each person-location, the probability distribution that the person will appear in that location at a specific time of day using geo-temporal travel patterns a panel of individuals. To reveal the collective regularity, we apply eigen-decomposition to the matrix of historical geo-temporal data. Unsupervised machine learning techniques are then used to extract commonalities across locations for different groups of travelers, making inferences, such as home and workplace. Testing the methodology on real-world data with known location labels shows that our method identifies home and workplace with significant accuracy, improving upon the best practices in the literature by 79% and 34%, respectively. The methodology proposed is computationally efficient and is highly scalable to other real-world applications with historical tracking data. It provides a basis to improve location-based services, such as mobile commerce, social events recommendations, and urban transit design.

Welfare consequences of request stops at transport services with low demand

BackgroundDemand-responsive transport is an alternative to fixed-route, fixed-scheduled transport services in low-demand areas.ObjectiveThis paper discusses the welfare and distributional consequences of the implementation of request stops (RSs) on a scheduled fixed-stop transport service.MethodThe discussion is based on a general welfare model. The focus is on discussing how the magnitudes of the welfare effects on different groups of travellers are influenced by travel patterns and the characteristics of the travellers involved.ResultsThe effects of implementing RSs are critically dependent on the booking procedure, the variation in demand throughout the day, and the travellers’ time values per hour when on the mode and when arriving at the destinations before having any appointments. Moreover, the benefits for the operators and the authorities depend strongly on the risk profile in the tendering contract.

Preferences for long-distance coach transport: Evidence from a discrete choice experiment

Compared to other transport modes, coach transport continues to have a limited share in long-distance travel. Nevertheless, this can change due to the recent liberalization of the coach market in many West European countries. In this paper, we analyse if long-distance travellers could be interested in coach transport, and which service characteristics are most convincing in addition to travel time and travel cost. For this purpose, we designed an online stated preference survey and collected data from 274 Belgian respondents who occasionally travel long-distances by coach for business, leisure or visiting friends or family. Our results show that travel costs or prices are a dominant factor determining the preferences for coach transport. But in addition to this, other so-called quality-of-service attributes have an impact on the willingness-to-pay for coach transport. This holds for ample leg space, catering, Wi-Fi (especially for business travellers), and the presence of an individual entertainment system (especially for frequent travellers). Because we accounted for the interaction between such service attributes and different groups of travellers in terms of trip purpose, travel frequency and age, our results also offer insights to coach operators into different travel market segments.

Accessibility for All in Public Transport and the Overlooked (Social) Dimension—A Case Study of Stockholm

Sweden was early to develop legislation related to accessible public transport for disabled people in 1979 and can therefore be seen as a forerunner. However, recent findings reveal widespread barriers in the Swedish public transport system and large variations between different parts of the country. This paper draws on empirical material consisting of complaints regarding accessibility left by travellers in Stockholm to a local transit company and aims to provide an overview of the character of complaints and to identify common themes through a qualitative content analysis. The results show that the most commonly reported challenge relates to boarding or getting off the vehicles, where the drivers are mostly described as the underlying reason for those difficulties. The narratives describe how some drivers misuse (or do not use) the accessibility equipment or show an abusive or attitudinal behaviour. The results support the body of literature on the meaning of continuous work with accessibility issues in public transport. Varying views on disability may have had a substantial impact on the development of our societies and on how the issues of accessibility in the public transport system have been prioritised or handled. Thus, this study highlights existing social barriers and variations in individual capacities as important factors that influence the experiences of public transport users. The study recommends an increased focus on educating drivers and staff about how to accommodate different groups of travellers. The study also recommends that transport providers consider drivers’ working conditions (i.e., with the consideration of timetables and high time-pressure). Further research on how well accessibility adaptations in public transport actually work and how the users perceive them is necessary.

Who, Where, Why and When? Using Smart Card and Social Media Data to Understand Urban Mobility

This study describes the integration and analysis of travel smart card data (SCD) with points of interest (POIs) from social media for a case study in Shenzhen, China. SCD ticket price with tap-in and tap-out times was used to identify different groups of travellers. The study examines the temporal variations in mobility, identifies different groups of users and characterises their trip purpose and identifies sub-groups of users with different travel patterns. Different groups were identified based on their travel times and trip costs. The trip purpose associated with different groups was evaluated by constructing zones around metro station locations and identifying the POIs in each zone. Each POI was allocated to one of six land use types, and each zone was allocated a set of land use weights based on the number of POI check-ins for the POIs in that zone. Trip purpose was then inferred from trip time linked to the land use at the origin and destination zones using a novel “land use change rate” measure. A cluster analysis was used to identify sub-groups of users based on individual temporal travel patterns, which were used to generate a novel “boarding time profile”. The results show how different groups of users can be identified and the differences in trip times and trip purpose quantified between and within groups. Limitations of the study are discussed and a number of areas for further work identified, including linking to socioeconomic data and a deeper consideration of the timestamps of POI check-ins to support the inference of dynamic and multiple land uses at one location. The methods and metrics developed by this research use social media POI data to semantically contextualise information derived from the SCD and to overcome the drawbacks and limitations of traditional travel survey data. They are novel and generalizable to other studies. They quantify spatiotemporal mobility patterns for different groups of travellers and infer how their purposes of their journeys change through the day. In so doing, they support a more nuanced and detailed view of who, where, when and why people use city spaces.

Application of the “Foot-in-the-Door” Compliance Technique for Traveler Intercept Surveys

Traveler intercept surveys are used to obtain essential data for transportation planning purposes in a variety of contexts and situations. This paper describes an application of the foot-in-the-door (FITD) compliance technique for traveler intercept surveys as a way to increase participation and improve the overall experience for both the traveler and the organization conducting the survey. Outcomes related to survey participation and response characteristics for three such surveys are presented. The two-stage FITD method described in this paper was successful at collecting a small amount of data from a majority of travelers at the locations being studied while minimizing the inconvenience to the traveler. A follow-up survey conducted via the Internet had a response rate that varied between the different case studies and also among different groups of travelers. Approximately one-third of follow-up survey responses were provided on the same day as the initial interaction between the traveler and the researcher, whereas one-quarter of respondents utilized a mobile device to complete the follow-up survey. The results of these case studies are informative for the development of traveler intercept surveys. Transportation planners are encouraged to consider the FITD technique described in this paper when developing traveler intercept surveys within their jurisdictions.

Análisis del perfil sociodemográfico y de las motivaciones del turista que visita Quito, Ecuador

Este artículo presenta un análisis, fundamentado en un trabajo de campo, sobre las características sociodemográficas, las formas de preparación, las motivaciones y las valoraciones del viaje de los turistas que visitan Quito, Ecuador. Los resultados de la investigación muestran la diferenciación del perfil del turista en cuanto a preparación, motivación y valoración del destino, dependiendo del área geográfica de la cual proceda. La principal aplicación práctica de esta investigación es comprender las características de los turistas que visitan Quito, con el objetivo de concebir productos culturales y turísticos que satisfagan las necesidades de los distintos grupos de turistas.

Travel needs revisited

The reasons for human desire to wander away from the normal environment for pleasure purposes have long been the focus of academic attention. Empirical studies revealed many scales for assessing needs in different contexts and for different groups of travelers. The objective of the current study is to develop and validate a comprehensive yet concise Travel Needs Scale (TNS) with a general applicability in different types of travels. The initial pool of items is developed from the literature, followed by a survey design applied on an online research platform. The results of the confirmatory factor analysis support the psychometric property of the scale. The resultant TNS, comprised of self-actualization, social affiliation, arousal, and escape, reflects the fundamental needs of various types of travelers and provides a framework to guide future research. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Valuation of a transfer in a multimodal public transport trip

Improvement of chain mobility is considered a major issue in public transport use. Transfers within a public transport trip are the least appreciated part of the trip. This research quantifies the experienced transfer disutility of a transfer between BTM and train. The influence of travel time, transfer time, headway, costs and station facilities on the valuation of a transfer is estimated, based on a web-based stated preference (SP) experiment with over 1145 respondents. A set of mixed logit models was estimated, including sub-models by trip purpose, travel frequency, access/egress mode and journey stage (access or egress). The modeling results show that the total disutility during the interchange depends on the total time, the distribution of the time spent (access, transfer, waiting time) and headway. In general, the most optimal transfer time is found to be 8min, but relevant differences are found among respondents and stations. The highlighted preferences of different groups of travelers can be used by public transport service to meet the travelers' needs in a transfer, and decrease the transfer disutility.

Differences in probability weighting for individual travelers: a managed lane choice application

Using a 2012 stated preference survey based on a traveler’s most recent actual trip, this study predicts traveler choices between general purpose lanes and managed lanes for a freeway in Houston, Texas. The choice model incorporates probability weighting for risky travel times. The results indicate significant improvement in predicative power over a model that excludes weighting, confirming non-linearity in the probability weighting function. The maximum value of time (VOT) measures calculated in this study are lower than estimated in many previous route choice studies. This highlights the importance of incorporating individual weights for travel risks. Travelers’ underweighting of travel time risks would help explain the lower VOTs found in our study because respondents consider route choice decision-making as a gamble, but assign their own probabilities of occurrence to arriving at their destination on time, late, or early. We find that traveler groups are heterogeneous and the different weights developed for different groups of travelers can be used to better understand their probabilities. Segmentation analysis indicates that Age may serve to proxy the effects of more experience over time, or changing driving abilities, or changes in one’s sense of optimism or pessimism at different ages. Gender and Income also play a role in how the objective probabilities presented to respondents were translated into subjective probabilities.

An exploratory study of the differences in prior travel experience and tourist information sources

The information search of potential travelers is an important component of tourism. Essentially, it is how travelers learn about tourism destinations, which affects their decision whether or not to visit. The primary purpose of this visitor inquiry study is to group inquirers based on their prior travel to the study destination and total travel. Then, the study examines differences across the different groups of travelers based on prior travel experience and the usefulness of various information sources. Results reveal differences between prior travel experience groups and the importance of previous trips to the study destination, relatives, and official visitors guide as sources of information. Implications for convention and visitor bureaus are discussed.

Day-to-day variability in travellers’ activity-travel patterns in the Jakarta metropolitan area

Using four consecutive days of SITRAMP 2004 data from the Jakarta metropolitan area (JMA), Indonesia, this study examines the interactions between individuals’ activity-travel parameters, given the variability in their daily constraints, resources, land use and road network conditions. While there have been a significant number of studies into day-to-day variability in travel behaviour in developed countries, this issue is rarely examined in developing countries. The results show that some activity-travel parameter interactions are similar to those produced by travellers from developed countries, while others differ. Household and individual characteristics are the most significant variables influencing the interactions between activity-travel parameters. Different groups of travellers exhibit different trade-off mechanisms. Further analyses of the stability of activity-travel patterns across different days are also provided. Daily commuting time and regular work and study commitments heavily shape workers’ and students’ flexibility in arranging their travel time and out-of-home time budget, leading to more stable daily activity-travel patterns than non-workers.

Attitudes towards Disintermediation in Hotel Reservations: Spanish Travellers’ Profile

This paper investigates the attitudes of different groups of travellers for and against the disintermediation of travel agencies. In the travel and tourism sector, the way in which people plan, buy and consume tourism products has been deeply transformed by the Internet and user-generated content (UGC), thus challenging the role of traditional travel agencies. A web-based survey was carried out among Spanish consumers whose last hotel reservation was made through the Internet. A convenience sample of 986 complete questionnaires was obtained. Multivariate tests were used first to analyse the relationship and dependency between socio-demographic variables and second to look for significant differences between occasional, moderate and frequent buyers regarding their positive and negative perceptions of hotel reservations’ disintermediation process. The findings reveal that significant differences exist between online buyers based on their socio-demographic characteristics and their online purchase experience, whereas they do not differ based on their likelihood of being influenced by UGC in their final choices. Another interesting finding is that the Internet is most frequently used for hotel reservations in short-term leisure and short-haul travel. Implications for travel agency managers are discussed and suggestions for further research are made.

Humans introduce viable seeds to the Arctic on footwear

Expanding visitation to Polar regions combined with climate warming increases the potential for alien species introduction and establishment. We quantified vascular plant propagule pressure associated with different groups of travelers to the high-Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, and evaluated the potential of introduced seeds to germinate under the most favorable average Svalbard soil temperature (10°C). We sampled the footwear of 259 travelers arriving by air to Svalbard during the summer of 2008, recording 1,019 seeds: a mean of 3.9 (±0.8) seeds per traveler. Assuming the seed influx is representative for the whole year, we estimate a yearly seed load of around 270,000 by this vector alone. Seeds of 53 species were identified from 17 families, with Poaceae having both highest diversity and number of seeds. Eight of the families identified are among those most invasive worldwide, while the majority of the species identified were non-native to Svalbard. The number of seeds was highest on footwear that had been used in forested and alpine areas in the 3 months prior to traveling to Svalbard, and increased with the amount of soil affixed to footwear. In total, 26% of the collected seeds germinated under simulated Svalbard conditions. Our results demonstrate high propagule transport through aviation to highly visited cold-climate regions and isolated islands is occurring. Alien species establishment is expected to increase with climate change, particularly in high latitude regions, making the need for regional management considerations a priority.

Shifting towards environment-friendly modes: profiling travelers using Q-methodology

Due to a variety of reasons, the previous century is characterized by an extraordinary growth in car use that has continued into the current century. This has resulted in serious environmental repercussions. Despite technological advancements, the externalities remain an ecological threat that can not be discarded by policy makers. Therefore, it is essential that policy makers focus on reducing car use and on stimulating the shift towards more environment-friendly transport modes. In this study, Q-methodology is adopted as the technique to segment people, and to ascertain which approaches and determinants matter to medium distance travel. Segmentation is important, as policy measures will be more efficient and effective if they are fine-tuned on specific target groups. The analysis revealed that four discourses preponderate the paradigm of environmentally sustainable transport: travelers who use public transport as a dominant alternative, car-dependent travelers, travelers with a positive perception of using public transport, and travelers with a preference for car use. Concerning rational, economic motives, individuals evaluate travel time reliability as most important. To increase the reliability policy makers should consider the use of separate bus lanes and traffic light manipulation. In addition, public transport can be made even more attractive, when costs of cars are made more variable by road or congestion charging. When the s motives are discussed, the differences between the different groups of travelers were more pronounced. Next to increasing the benefits of using public transport, policy makers should also pay attention to removing psycho-social barriers.

Exploring Wine Tourism in New Zealand: The Visitors' Points of Views

With the remarkable growth of New Zealand's wine industry in the last decade, the concept of wine tourism has been gaining in popularity among different groups of travelers to rural areas. Numerous factors can impact individuals' decision to visit wineries. Many consumer-related studies emphasize the consumers' perceived value of the consumption experience, as well as how to deliver a satisfying experience to consumers. This also applies to wineries seeking to attract visitors and benefit commercially in the process in the form of wine and food sales. This study conducted among New Zealand wineries explores several aspects related to visitors' winery experience. These aspects include the most relevant factors impacting on visitors' decision to travel to wineries, how visitors discover their chosen winery, the value they place on elements of their winery experience, and their overall satisfaction. The findings suggest the critical importance of word-of-mouth advertising in influencing winery choice. The results also indicate that a rather large number of visitors travel to wineries for reasons other than the wine, including their proximity of the winery, passing by, or on route to another destination. The overall results could have important implications for wineries, particularly in their efforts to market their businesses.

Hidden messages: A polysemic reading of tourist brochures

It is self-evident that tourist brochures are selling a positive and attractive destination to travellers; what is not as clear are the hidden messages conveyed by the selection of certain pictures in the brochures produced. By coding each picture appearing in a series of tourist brochures according to their content this research aims at showing how the brochures are overtly aimed at different groups of travellers, while they simultaneously are reinforcing certain hegemonic views of society. The suggestion that hegemonic messages appear is not an accusation against the producers of the brochures of covert propaganda, but rather that taken-for-granted views of society as unproblematic truths portrayed in the brochures is not correct-the brochures should rather be viewed as highly sensitive polysemic constructs.

Investigation and analysis of evidence of asymmetric churn in travel demand models

There is a large amount of research work that has been devoted to the understanding of travel behaviour and for the prediction of travel demand and its management. Different types of data including stated preference and revealed preference, as well as different modelling approaches have been used to predict this. Essential to most travel demand forecasting models are the concepts of utility maximisation and equilibrium, although there have been alternative approaches for modelling travel behaviour. In this paper, the concept of asymmetric churn is discussed. That is travel behaviour should be considered as a two way process which changes over time. For example over time some travellers change their mode of travel from car to bus, but more travellers change their mode from bus to car. These changes are not equal and result in a net change in aggregate travel behaviour. Transport planners often aim at producing this effect in the opposite direction. It is important therefore to recognise the existence of churns in travel behaviour and to attempt to develop appropriate policies to target different groups of travellers with the relevant transport policies in order to improve the transport system. A data set collected from a recent large survey, which was carried out in Edinburgh is investigated to analyse the variations in departure time choice behaviour. The paper reports on the results of the investigation.

Balearic islands tourism: a case study in demographic segmentation

Segmentation strategy has become increasingly important for successful marketing planning in the tourism industry. This paper examines the different behavior of two different groups of travelers visiting Majorca and the effects of these on the tourism policy of the Island. This effect is validated by reference to data collected by the survey made in 1995 for the Economics Department of the University of the Balearic Islands.