Multipurpose Trips Research Articles

Extensions to Competitive Facility Location with Multi-purpose Trips

Extensions to Competitive Facility Location with Multi-purpose Trips

How downtown multifunctionality is packaged is a key to its success

In the large downtowns in the US, the adaption rates and impacts of remote work have been strong and sparked efforts to make these districts far more multifunctional, especially by adding lots of new housing. While comparable city centres in Western Europe have not seen remote work have similar impacts on office occupancy, multifunctionalism has long been heralded as a factor that makes them strong. For example, it underpins their two key competitive advantages of dense agglomeration and the generation of many multipurpose trips. While multifunctionalism is a familiar concept and is often mentioned in relevant publications, there is amazingly little written about it theoretically, and little to no empirical research done on it. I took on that topic in a recent paper in which I noted that how downtown multifunctionality is ‘packaged’ in the physical containers in which the venues of these functions are activated, and how they physically relate to each other, are very often the key factors in determining whether efforts to make a downtown more multifunctional will succeed. I also argued that a function must have very magnetic destinations active in these containers. This paper focuses just on the topic of packaging functions and is an expansion of my prior analysis that covers much new ground.

Stochastic location models applied to multipurpose shopping trips

In a competitive multi-purpose (MP) trips model, it is assumed that the proportion of customers that do MP trips is given. In this paper, we investigate a model with a stochastic proportion of MP trips. Five decision analysis criteria are analyzed for finding the best location for a new facility under these circumstances. We first design a general approach that can be applied to many location problems. We then prove that by the optimistic rule, the solution is one of the extreme cases and construct solution algorithms to solve problems based on the other four rules optimally. The approach is demonstrated on the MP trips model. We performed computational experiments on instances between 100 and 20,000 demand points on five different models and two distance decay functions. The largest problem was solved within a given accuracy in about 8 h for the most time-consuming model. Our general approach can be applied to other location models (not necessarily competitive) when a parameter of such models is stochastic.

Exploring Agent-Based Modelling for Car-Based Volunteer Driver Program Planning

Volunteer driver programs (VDPs) utilize the service of volunteers to replicate car-based, demand-responsive, door-to-door services in rural areas, but little is understood about how external factors (e.g., changes in service area) affect VDP sustainability. Agent-based modelling (ABM) simulates the operational behavior of individual agents (e.g., drivers, users) to evaluate their interaction under specified scenarios, and although it has been used in transportation research, it has never been applied to VDP analysis. Netlogo was used to develop a simplified VDP ABM, calibrated and validated with 1 year of program data from the New Brunswick Volunteer Driving Database. Three model scenarios were tested: increased health trip distance, increased service area, and increasing the number of drivers to meet initial distance targets. The ABM demonstrated intuitive results and established connections among changing operational scenarios, though additional research is needed for multipurpose trips and user/driver/dispatcher interactions.

Understanding Thai Urban Pedestrian Culture During Noon Break: How Sidewalk Users Experience the Walking Infrastructure in Bangkok, Thailand

The noon break or lunch hour in Bangkok’s central business district (CBD) is when pedestrians wander around for various activities and purposes, in addition to having a meal, within a limited time frame. It is the only break from their daily working routines for energy recovery or socializing, which, in turn, increases readiness to continue working in the afternoon. Commercial activities preferred by pedestrians during this break contribute to increased economic activity. Since pedestrian behavior depends on the cultural context, this research aims to understand Thai urban pedestrian culture that benefits the public, both socially and economically, and to investigate pedestrians’ experience of the physical quality of their walking infrastructure, reflecting their preferences. 
 According to the information gained from observation, a field survey of four hundred thirty observations, and descriptive statistics, the urban pedestrian culture in the CBD of Bangkok is a combination of various activities related to a way of life; 69.4% and 44.9% of observed pedestrians have secondary and tertiary purposes. These multi-purpose trips during lunch hours include having meals, shopping, recovery from work, socializing, and taking care of business or running errands. The routine of lunch outings declined only slightly after the start of the pandemic in early 2020 compared to the pre-pandemic level (81.8% compared to 94.9%). Socializing has strong presence in the culture; 90.5% of group outings occur at least once or twice a week. 
 On the physical side, the walking infrastructure, mainly comprising sidewalks, is used for circulation and as a place for social and economic settings. Using hierarchical cluster analysis, pedestrians’ concerns about the physical environment were divided into five groups, as follows: Cluster 1, people concerned about thermal comfort, surface conditions, and sidewalk obstructions. Cluster 2, people concerned about thermal comfort and walking distance. Cluster 3, people concerned about level changes and walking distance. Cluster 4, people concerned about surface conditions and sidewalk obstructions. Lastly, cluster 5, people concerned about sidewalk obstructions, traffic safety, and level changes. 
 In conclusion. significant problems experienced or causing concern to pedestrians include sidewalk obstructions of flow due to insufficient width of the walking space as well as blockages caused by utility infrastructure, or social or economic activities, walking distance, surface conditions of sidewalks, level changes, thermal comfort, and traffic safety, respectively. These experiences and concerns reflect pedestrians’ preference for better quality of walking infrastructure. Therefore, inducing walkability is a promising physical strategy for promoting and sustaining Thai urban pedestrian culture.

Optimizing The Functional Performance of Road Network using Vulnerability Assessment to Cope with Unforeseen Road Incidents

An Urban Road network is often used for multipurpose trips, due to their transportation functions, such as attractiveness and orientation, as well as social, ecological, and economic features. In Indonesia, road incidents have reportedly increased during the last decade because of a higher frequency of natural hazards, accidents, and on-street mass demonstrations. These incidents are found to degrade or terminate road access, forcing users to utilize alternative routes and decreasing the service performance in adjacent directions. Due to the unexpected occurrences at any location and time, there is a need to investigate the impact of random incidents on road performances. Several accessibility indexes have also been used to evaluate the vulnerability of road networks. However, this is less practical in Indonesia, with the road authority using functional performances as the indicator. This indicates the need for an index to be developed based on road performance parameters. Therefore, this study aims to develop a road performance-based vulnerability index known as the RCI (Road Criticality Index). Combined with a traffic simulation tool, this system is used as an alternative index to assess vulnerabilities, by identifying the road(s) providing worse consequences due to unforeseen incidents. This simulation was conducted by using the PTV Visum, assuming a road section is closed due to the worst incident scenarios. The result showed that the RCI offered a more comprehensive assessment than the existing indicator (volume capacity ratio). The RCI included travel speed and mobility components for evaluating both local and global road performances. With the knowledge of the most vulnerable locations and their consequences, road authorities can prioritize maintenance and development strategies based on the criticality index. Also, preventive measures should be conducted to mitigate risk under a constrained budget. This methodology can be applied to sustainably enhance the resilience of urban road networks.

Motorcycle three-wheelers in Pakistan: Low-cost rural transport services, crucial for women’s mobility

Rural women and men without their own means of transport depend on transport services. In low- and middle-income countries these are mainly provided by informal sector entrepreneurs. In Pakistan, motorcycle three-wheelers (designed as six-seater, route-based vehicles) provide most rural transport services. Research was undertaken in three districts of Punjab Province, with traffic counts and surveys of transport users. Motorcycles are increasing rapidly, and men’s use of transport services is declining. The traffic counts showed motorcycles for personal and family use carry almost half of the people travelling. Women are increasingly passengers on motorcycles driven by male relatives, but these are seldom available for women’s multipurpose trips during the daytime. On village-to-town roads, motorcycle three-wheelers are the only low-cost (two cents USD per passenger-km) public transport throughout the day. Point-to-point taxis are more costly. Most (55%) of women’s public transport journeys are in three-wheelers. Women and men rate motorcycle three-wheelers highly, particularly their fares and frequency. Women have a greater willingness to pay more for less crowded, safer vehicles than men. It is concluded that the informal sector motorcycle three-wheeler services are optimising village-to-town transport connections, providing the only low-cost travel option for many rural women. Policies should avoid disrupting their vital services. With motorcycle growth undermining transport services, gender-aware strategies should be developed to facilitate frequent, uncrowded three-wheeler operations.

Understanding Chinese tourist mobility and consumption-related behaviours in London using Sina Weibo check-ins

In this paper, we detail an individual-level analysis of under-exploited location-based social network (LBSN) data extracted from Sina Weibo, a comprehensive source for data-driven research focused on Chinese populations. The richness of the Sina Weibo data, coupled with high-quality venue and attraction information from Foursquare, enables us to track Chinese tourists visiting London and understand behaviours and mobility patterns revealed by their activities and venue-based ‘check-ins’. We use these check-ins to derive a series of indicators of mobility which reveal aggregate and individual-level behaviours associated with Chinese tourists in London, and which act as a tool to segment tourists based on those behaviours. Our data-driven tourist segmentation indicates that different groups of Chinese tourists have distinctive activity preferences and travel patterns. Our primary interest is in tourists’ consumption behaviours, and we reveal that tourists with similar activity preferences still exhibit individualised behaviours with regards to the nature and location of key consumption activities such as shopping and dining out. We aim to understand more about Chinese tourist shopping behaviours as a secondary activity associated with multi-purpose trips, demonstrating that these data could permit insights into tourist behaviours and mobility patterns which are not well captured by official tourism statistics, especially at a localised level. This analysis could be up-scaled to incorporate additional LBSN data sources and broader population subgroups in order to support data-driven urban analytics related to tourist mobilities and consumption behaviours.

Allocation Model of Urban Cores and Evaluation of Accessibility Regarding Daily Multipurpose Trip

市街地拡大と人口密度低下により，インフラ維持コストの増大や公共交通の衰退が懸念されている中で，都市機能と公共交通の一体的な考慮による効果的かつ実現可能な都市構造の構築が求められている．本研究では，住民施設利用の実態と自治体における現状の施設配置と公共交通網に基づき，複数施設利用のメリットを考慮した拠点配置手法を提案し，利用可能人口の割合（充足率）と複数施設利用のメリットから自治体の利便性の現状と施設改善効果を評価することを目的とする．まず，住民の日常生活の外出に関するWebアンケートから1回の外出で複数の施設の利用と公共交通によるアクセスが利便性の向上に重要な要素であることがわかった．次に，複数施設利用を考慮した拠点配置モデルを構築し，現状の市施設利用における充足率と複数施設利用メリットの2つの指標から評価した結果，施設は利用できるものの，複数施設利用メリットには優劣があることを明らかにした．その指標に基づいた利便性向上の方針を提案した．さらに，施設の新設場所と種類を求めるモデルを構築し，具体的な都市での拠点配置結果より，施設追加による充足率の改善に効果を示した．

Comparing Spatial-Interaction and Hybrid Agent-Based Modelling Approaches: An Application to Location Analysis of Services

Aggregated models, such as spatial interaction (SIM) models are widely used in location analysis. Despite their popularity, there are certain limitations to their use. In particular, the method struggles to account for the passing-by population and multi-purpose trips of retail clients, temporal changes in accessibility and some bottom-up processes potentially important for services. Agent-based modelling (ABM) is a promising technique that attempts to address all these problems. However, it still lacks examples of real-world applications. This article aims to provide an example of how hybrid ABM (H-ABM) can be built on a SIM foundation, by incorporating most of its ideas, such as distance-decay function, facility attractiveness parameters and demand elasticity. The author aligns the two models as close as possible and compares their input data, calibration procedures and results. In the final analysis, the hybrid agent-based model proved to be more realistic because it incorporated the time-space variability of supply (i.e., limited numbers of available places in swimming pools), demand (the popularity of certain entry hours) and transport (traffic jams during rush hours). The spatial interaction model was much faster to execute and turned out to be more convenient for more straightforward applications, which do not require detailed data concerning individuals.

Effects of multipurpose shopping trips on retail store location in a duopoly

Models for retail store location typically assume that consumers make single purpose trips. However, frequently, consumers purchase more than one product during the same trip. This is the first attempt to propose including multipurpose trips in models locating commercial facilities selling non-essential products. We model and analyze the case in which two firms sell one product or type of products each. Consumers buy one, both, or none, depending on the utility they obtain. We solve 1000 instances and report the results, which indicate that firms significantly benefit from taking into account multipurpose trips when locating their stores. Based on the difficulty to solve one version of the problem, we also derive an efficient heuristic algorithm for the solution and test its performance.

STRUCTURES AND PATHS FOR THE EXPLORATION OF LANDSCAPE – CULTURAL MOSAIC

The main aim of this paper is to highlight the evolution of urban and peri-urban networks in view of their use by dwellers and visitors. It considers the knowledge as a part of a hidden permanent education form, and as a prerequisite for full enjoyment of available culture, sport and health facilities. Although, the objectives of the inhabitants and tourists are very different, their basic structural needs and the underlying methodology have common characteristics. In this prospective, the central element is the ability to build networks that connect the nodes of interest, which are functional (services at various levels), cultural (historical and artistic emerging features), and leisure (dedicated sport facilities and locations). Furthermore, the paper investigates the paths and times of networks connections, providing particular attention to multipurpose trips consistence of either dwellers or tourists.

Application of the travel cost method for the valuation of the Poseidon temple in Sounio, Greece

Abstract In this paper the application of the travel cost method for estimating consumer surpluses and total values attributed to the Poseidon temple in Sounio, Greece, is presented. The monument in question is one of the most important archaeological sites in Greece, built in the middle of the 5th century BC. The implementation of the method was supported by a survey of the visitors of the monument, through the completion of an appropriately designed questionnaire with personal interviews. The results of the analysis show that the consumer surplus for visiting the Poseidon temple ranges from € 1.5–24.5 million per year, giving useful insights for the amount of money that are socially acceptable to be spent by the Greek state for the protection and maintenance of the monument. Treatment of travel costs associated with multipurpose trips as well as the type of functional form used to estimate how travel costs influence visitation rates, seem to be the two most important parameters affecting the final results.

Minisum multipurpose trip location problem on trees

AbstractWe consider the problem of locating facilities of two types at nodesof a tree network. Customers may need just one type of service, or bothtypes; in the latter case, to minimize transportation costs, the customers visit facilities of both types in a single trip. Each facility incurs a fixed cost that depends on the type of the facility and the node where it is located. It is required to minimize the sum of the total transportation and fixed costs. For the problem with a single facility of each type, we present an O( n) exact algorithm, which improves on the algorithm presented in [2]. For the problem with multiple facilities of each type, we present an algorithm. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NETWORKS, Vol. 63(2), 154–159 2014

Choice set formation with multiple flexible activities under space–time constraints

In classical time geography, an individual travel path is composed of a chain of visits, with each visit being a flexible activity between two fixed activities at two known stations. In reality, individuals tend to carry out trips with much variation and complexity, with multipurpose trips being a prominent and pervasive phenomenon. There is limited research to date on multipurpose trips in time-geographic analysis by geographic information system (GIS) scientists, or more specifically, multiple flexible activities between two fixed stations. To fill this gap, this article proposes four models for identifying the choice set with multiple flexible activities under space–time constraints. The models are derived through set-theoretic formalism based on the concept of trip chaining. The structure of the four models establishes a theoretical framework for conceptualizing trip-chaining behaviour with respect to the fixity of activities and the number of fixed stations as destinations or origins. They provide fundamental and rigorous apparatus for studying complex individual activity–travel patterns in many applied contexts when multipurpose trips are involved. This article also describes implementation of the models with a real transportation network as a way of validation.

Hybrid genetic algorithm for network locating problem by considering multi-purpose trip in stochastic state

In this paper, the locating problem was studied by considering a network of nodes and edges, and also two types of facilities which were defined for locating on nodes. It was assumed that there were three types of consumers, which were classified according to their demands. The first and the second types of them referred to one facility of the first or the second, but the third type of consumers needed the two facilities-the first and the second. These consumers according to their distance to the facilities based on a specified probability, referred to the facilities and solved their problems. Considering the existence of competitors in the market, the aim of this issue is to maximize market share for the new facilities. To solve the problem the hybrid genetic algorithm was used.

Multi-Destination and Multi-Purpose Trip Effects in the Analysis of the Demand for Trips to a Remote Recreational Site

One of the basic assumptions of the travel cost method for recreational demand analysis is that the travel cost is always incurred for a single purpose recreational trip. Several studies have skirted around the issue with simplifying assumptions and dropping observations considered as nonconventional holiday-makers or as nontraditional visitors from the sample. The effect of such simplifications on the benefit estimates remains conjectural. Given the remoteness of notable recreational parks, multi-destination or multi-purpose trips are not uncommon. This article examines the consequences of allocating travel costs to a recreational site when some trips were taken for purposes other than recreation and/or included visits to other recreational sites. Using a multi-purpose weighting approach on data from Gros Morne National Park, Canada, we conclude that a proper correction for multi-destination or multi-purpose trip is more of what is needed to avoid potential biases in the estimated effects of the price (travel-cost) variable and of the income variable in the trip generation equation.

The Minisum Multipurpose Trip Location Problem on Networks

We investigate multipurpose trip location problems on networks with two different types of facilities and three groups of customers, two of which need only one type of service, while the third group needs both types of service in a single trip. The objective is to minimize the total weighted travel distance of all trips. We prove that there exists a dominating location set for the problem on a general network, propose a general binary programming model, and analyze the properties of optimal solutions on networks with simple topologies and one facility per type. We also investigate several heuristic approaches to the problem on general networks and present extensive computational experiments.

Urban Public Facility Location, Multipurpose Trips and Spatial Competition: Equilibrium and Welfare Analysis

We study the impact of the urban location of one single public facility on spatial competition a la Hotelling. If transportation costs are very low compared to the value of the public service then both firms tacitly choose the facility location without moderation of price competition, in contrast to mainstream results in the literature. In this event, minimum differentiation is efficient. For intermediate values of the relative transportation rate, inefficient partially-dispersed equilibria emerge with one firm at the facility site while its competitor locates at one end of the linear city. We also analyze the welfare impacts of changes, successively, in the facility location and the transportation rate, taking into account firms relocations.

Strategy Development of Mixed Land Use for Restraining Trip Generation in Taipei City, Taiwan

Many urban developers recommend mixed land use to achieve urban sustainability. One primary reason is that mixed land use reduces trip generation by enhancing multipurpose and pass-by trips and contributing to development efficiency and environmental protection. This study empirically investigated the effect of mixed land use on trip generation by examining 187 traffic analysis zones in Taipei City, Taiwan. Excessive and intense mixed land use increases trip generation, whereas mixed land uses job-housing and retail-job to reduce trip generation. The retail-housing mix increases trip generation. On the basis of empirical findings, this study presents feasible strategies for both adjusting land use regulations and restraining trip generation to move Taipei City toward sustainability.