City Travel Research Articles

Can colored sidewalk nudge city tourists to walk? An experimental study of the effect of nudges

Physical inactivity has been an increasing sub-health condition. Nudging people to participate in physical activities consequently becomes a public health priority. This study aims to showcase how color as a design factor can work to nudge city travelers to take on walking. Alongside the color effect, this experimental study incorporates another two design factors, namely, priming and social norms. The findings suggest that the use of colored sidewalks stimulate perceptual salience and individuals' moods, thereby increasing travelers' desire for walking. Priming tourists with sneakers and displaying social norms were also found to increase travelers’ interest in walking. The current study is innovative in incorporating color in the design of walkable routes in cities for its visitors. It is the first to apply nudges into the context of walkable city design oriented towards tourists.

How much traffic stress can cyclists endure?

Bicycles are a desirable but underutilised form of travel in many cities. A main barrier to a large uptake of cycling for travel is traffic safety. To assess how much traffic stress cyclists can endure and how this stress affects route choices, we have developed an index called Average Traffic Stress (ATS). This index aggregates several measurable characteristics, but the key ones are the trip distance and a road segment’s Level of Traffic Stress (LTS). Using Brisbane, Australia, as a case study, we analyse 3,304 GPS-tracked cycling trips and apply a multilevel regression model to link ATS to the individual characteristics of cyclists, as well as environmental characteristics. We find that younger male cyclists who make longer trips at higher trip speeds experience higherATS. Recreational trips produce less ATS. Flat topography, a disconnected street network, and a lack of cycling infrastructure are associated with higher ATS. Cyclists intuitively select routes with less car traffic and/or better cycling infrastructure to achieve the lowest level of ATS (rather than selection routes with the shortest distance or the flattest topography).

Identifying physical barriers through a real-life experience with mobility difficulties city travelers: a go-along interview method

Providing physical accessibility to the city centre is crucial in ensuring that everyone has equal access to employment, health care, education and social life. There should be no exclusionary or discriminatory practices that prevent anyone, including disabled people or OKU (from the Malay ‘Orang Kurang Upaya’) from participating in society. However, evidence from numerous studies shows that OKU has fewer opportunities to participate in built environment activities than non-disabled people due to inaccessible design. Even though OKU’s inclusion is linked to having access to the physical space, little effort has been given to exploring OKU’s life experience in reaching the city centre. The original research was aimed to investigate the physical accessibility of Kuala Lumpur city centre, as an example of a city in transition, and its effects on OKU’s inclusion. However, this paper focuses only on demonstrating a go-along interview as one of the primary data gathering methods employed in the first author’s doctoral thesis. The qualitative research design includes twenty go-along interviews with participants with limited mobility in order to learn about their real-life experience travelling to the city centre. With the current access and facilities provided, mobility-impaired travelers, particularly wheelchair users, still require assistance to reach their destination. In general, the mobility-impaired travelers confronted physical obstacles in gaining access to buildings and the internal circulation and services, negotiating barriers at street level and using various transportation modes to reach places. The go-along journeys also demonstrated that OKU faces attitudinal barriers and psycho-emotional disablism in addition to physical barriers, which may contribute to exclusion.

Internalizing the externalities of urban private transport – A case of Gurugram, national capital Region, India

The negative externalities associated with road traffic pose a key challenge to sustainable transportation. With the increase in personalized travel in most cities, there has been an increase in traffic density, resulting in longer travel times, lower average speeds, higher levels of fuel consumption, air and noise pollution, and discomfort for road users. This has put a lot of pressure on policymakers to devise ways for tackling this problem. This problem can be addressed by imposing such external costs on urban private transport users through various types of taxes, surcharges and levies. The present paper makes an attempt to estimate the external costs of urban private transport and explore to what extent urban private transport users shall be either willing to shift to different modes of public transit in the event of internalizationof external costs or shall be willing to pay for the external costs. The objective analysis carried out in this paper in the city of Gurugram in the nation capital region of India is expected to establish the negative externalities of urban private transport and highlight the possible migration to public transit in the event of internalizing the external costs of private transport.

A Ubiquitous Collective Tragedy in Transport

A tragedy of the commons is said to occur when individuals act only in their own interest but, in so doing, create a collective state of a group that is less than optimal due to uncoordinated action. Here, we explore the individual decision-making processes of commuters using various forms of transport within a city, forming a modal share which is then built into a dynamical model using travel time as the key variable. From a randomised start in the distribution of the modal share, assuming that some individuals change their commuting method, favouring lower travel times, we show that a stable modal share is reached corresponding to an equilibrium in the model. Considering the average travel time for all commuters within the city, we show that an optimal result is achieved only if the direct and induced factors and the number of users are equal for all transport modes. For asymmetric factors, the equilibrium reached is always sub-optimal, leading to city travel trajectories being “tragic”, meaning that individuals choose a faster commuting time but create a slower urban mobility as a collective result. Hence, the city evolves, producing longer average commuting times. It is also shown that if a new mode of transport has a small baseline commuting time but has a high induced impact for other users, then introducing it might result in a counter-intuitive result producing more congestion, rather than less.

Do information-based measures affect active travel, and if so, for whom, when and under what circumstances? Evidence from a longitudinal case-control study

Soft, information-based measures to encourage walking and cycling for travel are increasingly being recommended alongside infrastructure investments. Using principles of realist evaluation, we evaluate measures implemented as part of the European Physical Activity Through Sustainable Approaches (PASTA) study in Vienna (Austria), Örebro (Sweden), Rome (Italy), and Antwerp (Belgium) over a 3-year cohort study, and a further follow-up 2.5 years later in Vienna and Örebro. Increases in active modes of travel due to the interventions were most significant for walking, one year after the intervention, and for people in full-time employment. Increases in e-bike use were associated with changes in perceptions of cycling, while increases in walking were not associated with any changes in perceptions of walking. We find evidence supporting previous findings that information provision is unlikely to work as a standalone intervention in the longer run, but may be effective when combined with other policies. • Robust longer term evaluation of measures encouraging active travel in cities. • Soft measures helped increase walking and e-bicycling in all 4 cities 2014–2016. • Soft measures had the most long-term effect on e-bicycling, per the 2019 survey. • Public transit improvements can increase walking and may reduce driving.

Trip-pair based clustering model for urban mobility of bus passengers in Macao

ABSTRACT Public transit is a major mode of urban mobility in Macao, a compact and populous city in China. Public transit ridership is related to round-the-clock shift-based work arrangements in the gaming industry. Smartcards that are used in transit fare collection are a vital data source for understanding the travel patterns and characteristics of transit passengers. However, transactional information from single data sources is fragmented, hindering the extraction of mobility patterns. We proposed a trip-pair-based clustering model that extracts the within-day mobility patterns of bus riders. DBSCAN is employed to filter scattered trips and hierarchical agglomerative clustering to identify clusters. Using a six-month smartcard dataset from Macao, categories of bus passengers were identified. Travel patterns exist with irregular, one-way, and round-trip passengers, and shift workers. The unique shift-based work-life and mixed travel modes in Macao can serve as an example of dense and compact city travel for smart cities.

Assessing route redundancy of freeway networks in Mega-city regions

• Assess the route redundancy of freeway networks in mega-city regions. • Propose diversity and dispersion of alternative paths as two complementary measures. • Assess route redundancy of mega-city freeway networks at network and city levels. • Consider three major mega-city regions of China in the case studies. In this paper, we investigate the performance of freeway networks in mega-city regions from the perspective of route redundancy—the provision of alternative routes for travelers when their primary routes are disrupted by disasters. Specifically, route redundancy is assessed with two complementary dimensions: the diversity and dispersion of alternative routes. The former represents the number of alternative routes without disruptions, and the latter reflects the robustness of this number during disruptions. Three typical mega-city regions in China, namely the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and the Yangtze River Delta—are examined as case studies. Results indicate that travelers in first-tier cities (i.e., national economic or political centers) may have inadequate route redundancy. Route diversity increases when more topological cycles are traversed by numerous alternative routes. Additionally, alternative routes of the peripheral cities in mega-city regions are less dispersed, which cause their lack of redundancy and should be improved.

Zero-queue traffic control, using green-times and prices together

Reducing stationary or very slowly moving queues is one way of reducing congestion, pollution, inefficient stop–start travel and carbon emissions in cities. This paper considers traffic signal control and road pricing together; aiming to eliminate queueing in at least a subnetwork. Link-exit green-times and link-exit bottleneck delays are considered first in some detail; largely using a simple network. The paper then shows that policy P0, specified in Smith (1980, 2015), is capacity-maximising for a general network with vertical queueing delays. Then link exit prices, co-ordinated with green-times and also red times, are considered. It is shown that using prices (instead of delays) in the P0 control policy maximises the capacity of a general steady state network, with zero queues. This steady state capacity-maximisation ＋ zero-queue result is then extended to dynamic networks in two ways; an equilibrium extension and a day-to-day stability extension. The equilibrium extension shows that P0-with-prices maximises network capacity with zero queues in a dynamic network and the stability extension shows that a smoothed version of the P0-with-prices policy, called P0f, is able to deliver some stability as well as zero queue capacity maximisation. A simple example network has been given to illustrate several of the control-with-prices policies. It is shown that a biased version of P0-with-prices, Ph-with-prices, yields, for this simple network, higher utility than P0-with-prices itself.

Evaluating spatial accessibility to healthcare services from the lens of emergency hospital visits based on floating car data

ABSTRACT Public medical facilities that are closely related to the health of residents have been recognised as one of the most crucial elements in sustainable urban planning. For the sake of social equality of medical services (especially for emergency medical conditions), the spatial distributions of medical resources need to be accurately measured and continuously optimized. This study presents an effective method to examine night emergency hospital visit and analyse its spatiotemporal characteristics using float car data (FCD). By extracting the hospital service areas, the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) methodology was improved to calculate hospital accessibility. Then, the balance between hospital accessibility and population density was analysed. In addition, we investigated the relationship between individual hospital choice preferences and hospital level and analysed several factors that affect individual choices. These results help us understand the special requirements and need of emergency hospital travel in cities and identify areas where medical resources are scarce. They can be used as guidance for urban hospital planning and construction. And the approach of hospital access behaviour investigation and the improved 2SFCA method can also provide insights for other activity-based travel behaviour research.

Hidden city travel and its impact on airfare: The case with competing airlines

Hidden city pricing is an anomaly in airline pricing where a direct flight from A to B is more expensive than a multi-leg flight from A to B and B to C. In this case, customers wanting to travel from A to B may consider purchasing the connecting flight from A to C, deplane in B, and throw away the second leg of the itinerary. This practice is called hidden city ticketing. We study the cause and the impact of hidden city ticketing. The airline industry has perceived this practice harmful to profitability and has taken measures to discourage such practice. We build a stylized model where two airlines compete on a hub-and-spoke airline network and use a game theoretic approach to study airline and consumer decisions. We find that hidden city pricing can arise when an airline lowers the price of its indirect flight to compete with the competitor’s direct flight on the same route. We also find that strategic customers who seek hidden city traveling opportunity can attenuate competition by limiting the airlines’ ability to lower their price for connecting flights. Thus, when customers in the market start practicing hidden city ticketing, airlines face less competition and may be able to charge higher prices. Our results provide future-looking perspective on what may happen to the equilibrium airfare if customers start practicing hidden city ticketing.

Ride-Hailing Service Adoption and Local Context in Motorcycle-Based Societies: Case Study in Hanoi, Vietnam

The ride-hailing service (RHS) has emerged as a major form of daily travel in many Southeast Asian cities where motorcycles are extensively used. This study aims to analyze the local context in motorcycle-based societies, which may affect the establishment of travelers’ choice set after the appearance of RHSs. In particular, it empirically compares three types of choice-set structures in the context of urban travel mode choice by estimating standard logit and nested logit models to test six hypotheses on the associations of RHS adoption with its determinants. Revealed preference data of 449 trips from both RHS users and non-RHS users were collected through a face-to-face interview-based questionnaire survey in Hanoi, Vietnam, in December 2020. The results of model estimations revealed: (1) a substitutional effect for two-wheelers but not for four-wheelers, (2) a significant positive influence of car ownership on car RHS adoption but not on motorcycle RHS adoption, (3) significantly high sensitivity to travel time of motorcycle RHS but not of car RHS, (4) a significant negative effect of traffic congestion on car RHS adoption but an insignificant one on motorcycle RHS adoption, and (5) a significant positive association of an individual’s experience in using a smartphone with car RHSs but insignificant association with motorcycle RHSs. Our findings suggest that transportation policies of RHS motorcycles should be different from those of RHS cars because of the heterogeneity in travel behaviors of RHS users between them. They also indicate that the transition from motorcycles to cars as well as the difference in service availability among different types of RHSs should be incorporated into the development of transportation policies in Southeast Asian cities.

Spatial Analysis of Environmental Impacts Linked to Changes in Urban Mobility Patterns during COVID-19: Lessons Learned from the Cartagena Case Study

The impact of the pandemic caused by COVID-19 on urban pollution in our cities is a proven fact, although its mechanisms are not known in great detail. The change in urban mobility patterns due to the restrictions imposed on the population during lockdown is a phenomenon that can be parameterized and studied from the perspective of spatial analysis. This study proposes an analysis of the guiding parameters of these changes from the perspective of spatial analysis. To do so, the case study of the city of Cartagena, a medium-sized city in Spain, has been analyzed throughout the period of mobility restrictions due to COVID-19. By means of a geostatistical analysis, changes in urban mobility patterns and the modal distribution of transport have been correlated with the evolution of environmental air quality indicators in the city. The results show that despite the positive effect of the pandemic in its beginnings on the environmental impact of urban mobility, the changes generated in the behavior patterns of current mobility users favor the most polluting modes of travel in cities.

Gender differences in active travel in major cities across the world

There is lack of literature on international comparison of gender differences in the use of active travel modes. We used population-representative travel surveys for 19 major cities across 13 countries and 6 continents, representing a mix of cites from low-and-middle income (n = 8) and high-income countries (n = 11). In all the cities, females are more likely than males to walk and, in most cities, more likely to use public transport. This relationship reverses in cycling, with females often less likely users than males. In high cycling cities, both genders are equally likely to cycle. Active travel to access public transport contributes 30–50% of total active travel time. The gender differences in active travel metrics are age dependent. Among children (< 16 years), these metrics are often equal for girls and boys, while gender disparity increases with age. On average, active travel enables one in every four people in the population to achieve at least 30 min of physical activity in a day, though there is large variation across the cities. In general, females are more likely to achieve this level than males. The results highlight the importance of a gendered approach towards active transport policies. Such an approach necessitates reducing road traffic danger and male violence, as well as overcoming social norms that restrict women from cycling.

The Importance of English in The Development of The Tourism Sector in Banda Aceh

This study aims to find out how important the use of English is in developing the tourism sector in Banda Aceh and to find out how English is currently used in the development of the tourism sector in Banda Aceh. The research method used a mixed-method design. The research participants were the leaders and staff at the Banda Aceh City Tourism Office, Kana Tour and Travel, MU Wisata Tour and Travel Company, and Awa Tour and Travel which consists of 30 people, they are 4 leaders and 26 staff. This study used questionnaires and interviews as the instruments. The formula used to analyze the questionnaire data was the percentage formula from the Likert scale, and the interviews results were done through data transcription. After collecting data, it was found that based on the questionnaire answers of the staffs (at Banda Aceh City Tourism Office and Travel Agencies), the results of using English in the development of the tourism sector in Banda Aceh reached 93% which were considered important, and only 7% were not important. Meanwhile, currently in the tourism sector in Banda Aceh, English was also very important to use. These results are based on the interview answers of the leaders (at the Banda Aceh City Tourism Office and Travel Agencies). But the reasons for using it were different, such as making tour packages, providing tourism information, managing travel documents, interacting with international customers, carrying out activities in their respective fields, and working with other relevant agencies.

What travel scenarios are the opportunities of car sharing?

In face of high-investment and low-revenue crisis, it is critical for new-born car-sharing companies to focus on niche market. Existing literatures have already discussed the niche market of car sharing based on people’s irregular travel demands and scenarios; however, current research findings are still lack of adequate travel data support. Aiming to solve this problem, we develop a travel scenarios mining method that first define land usage types of travel Origin-Destination (OD) locations using spatial clustering analysis of city’s Points of interests (POI) data, and then discover the most representative travel scenarios using association rules mining method with car-sharing records data. Applying this approach to the car-sharing service case in Beijing, China, we find that: day-time business trips and evening entertainment trips around the city centre, commuting trips in off-peak time, and short-distance city travel for tourism are three travel scenarios suitable for car sharing’s niche in the initial stage of market entering. Furthermore, spatio-temporal consumption profiles and competitive advantages of car sharing in the three travel scenarios are analyzed. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. In this study, we address the question of finding niche market and suggest that it is critical for car sharing industry treading through the crisis in the early stage of development.

The effects of traveling in different transport modes on galvanic skin response (GSR) as a measure of stress: An observational study.

Stress is one of many ailments associated with urban living, with daily travel a potential major source. Active travel, nevertheless, has been associated with lower levels of stress compared to other modes. Earlier work has relied on self-reported measures of stress, and on study designs that limit our ability to establish causation. To evaluate effects of daily travel in different modes on an objective proxy measure of stress, the galvanic skin response (GSR). We collected data from 122 participants across 3 European cities as part of the Physical Activity through Sustainable Transport Approaches (PASTA) study, including: GSR measured every minute alongside confounders (physical activity, near-body temperature) during three separate weeks covering 3 seasons; sociodemographic and travel information through questionnaires. Causal relationships between travel in different modes (the "treatment") and stress were established by using a propensity score matching (PSM) approach to adjust for potential confounding and estimating linear mixed models (LMM) with individuals as random effects to account for repeated measurements. In three separate analyses, we compared GSR while cycling to not cycling, then walking to not walking then motorized (public or private) travel to any activity other than motorized travel. Depending on LMM formulations used, cycling reduces 1-minute GSR by 5.7% [95% CI: 2.0-16.9%] to 11.1% [95% CI: 5.0-24.4%] compared to any other activity. Repeating the analysis for other modes we find that: walking is also beneficial, reducing GSR by 3.9% [95% CI: 1.4-10.7%] to 5.7% [95% CI: 2.6-12.3%] compared to any other activity; motorized mode (private or public) in reverse increases GSR by up to 1.1% [95% CI: 0.5-2.9%]. Active travel offers a welcome way to reduce stress in urban dwellers' daily lives. Stress can be added to the growing number of evidence-based reasons for promoting active travel in cities.

Does low-carbon travel intention really lead to actual low-carbon travel? Evidence from urban residents in China

Urban residents’ travel is an important component of carbon emissions and is becoming a hot topic in discussions on how to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Existing studies mainly focus on low-carbon travel behaviours and intentions independently, ignoring the inconsistency between the two. This paper uses a bivariate probit model based on questionnaire survey data to explore the consistency between urban residents’ intentions and behaviour. The results show that sociodemographic factors, TPB (theory of planned behaviour) factors, and situational factors all significantly impact the inconsistency. This paper provides careful analysis, and based on the results and analysis, proposes targeted suggestions to enhance the public intention of low-carbon travel and proper policies to improve low-carbon travel in cities.

Congestion in cities: evidence on the form and causality of the macroscopic fundamental relationship of traffic flow

This paper quantifies the technology driving congestion in urban road networks. To do so, we estimate macroscopic fundamental relationships for homogeneously congested sub-networks (reservoirs) in thirty-four cities worldwide. We adopt a causal approach based on non-parametric instrumental variables to estimate the form of the reservoir-level flow-density relationship using large-scale traffic sensor data. Specifically, we apply a Bayesian non-parametric spline-based regression model with instrumental variables to adjust for potential confounding/endogeneity biases due to simultaneity and omitted variables such as vehicle interactions and traffic controls. Our estimates suggest that the provision of vehicular travel in cities is subject to decreasing returns to density and network size. Importantly, we find that increasing road network capacity is not an efficient solution to manage congestion because average travel speed does not change substantially with increase in capacity. As a by-product of the estimation, we also deliver estimates of important traffic control inputs such as capacity and critical occupancy for these reservoirs. Our results have implications for traffic flow modelling used by both economists and traffic engineers.

Social Networks Apps and their Role in Tourism Marketing in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This study aimed at investigating the role of social networks apps in tourism marketing for travel and tourism organizations in Al-Kharj City, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The study used the descriptive and analytical approach to achieve its objectives and test its hypothesis. The study found that social networks apps play a vital role in marketing the tourism product in Al-Kharj City as well as communicating effectively and cheaply with the customers. The study recommended nominating and training some workers in tourism organizations to deal with social media networks and design websites and applications for these organizations.