2013 Session: 282

• Carpooling in Switzerland: Public Attitudes and Growth Strategies
  Abstract: A recent study estimated the potential of carpooling in Switzerland. Part of this study was a survey in which the attitudes of the public towards this mode were investigated using both multi-response questions and a stated preference (SP) experiment. This paper reports on the results of the questionnaire. The first contribution of this paper is to give an insight on the reasons that motivate travellers to consider car-pooling as a possible alternative to driving alone with their own private car. Additionally, the questionnaire was the basis for factor and cluster analyses. Four different clusters of attitudes towards car pooling were identified among the population. This analysis is valuable to identify possible strategies to introduce carpooling at a larger scale in Switzerland. The results show that some parts of the population would be ready to embrace this mode of transport, in some cases even enthusiastically. This is true in particular for well educated, relatively affluent people. However, the responses suggest also that in order to exploit this potential, a system is necessary to address some of the typical issues related to carpooling. Safety is important but not the most important issue for potential participants. Practical aspects, like the guarantee of being able to go back home as a passenger if pools are arranged on a one-way basis, are those which worry respondents the most and, therefore, the most critical for carpooling success.
  Authors: Ciari, Francesco; Axhausen, Kay W.
  Authors: Ciari, Francesco; Axhausen, Kay W.
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Passenger Transportation
  Session: 282
  Paper Number: 13-2780
• Accounting for Systematic Heterogeneity Across Commuters in Response to Multiple TDM Policies: Application to a Megalopolis
  Abstract: Modeling commuters’ choice behavior in response to Transportation Demand Management (TDM) helps to predict the policies’ consequences. Although, research in the choice behavior has evolved to investigate preference heterogeneity in response to factors influencing their choice, none of them considered taste variation across commuters in response to multiple TDM policies. This paper investigates the presence of systematic preference heterogeneity across commuters’ in response to the TDM policies that can be explained by their socio-economic or commuting-related characteristics. The analysis is based on the results of a stated preferences survey developed through the design of experiments approach. Five policies includes increasing parking cost, increasing fuel cost, cordon pricing, transit time reduction, and transit access improvement are assessed in order to study their impact on commuters' consideration of six modes of transportation to travel to work. For the sake of assessing both systematic and random preference heterogeneity across car commuters, an extended form of Mixed Multinomial Logit (MMNL) model was developed for the 366 individuals who regularly commute to their workplace in the center of the city of Tehran, Iran as a developing country. In addition to a number of commuting and contextual variables, the model shows that the taste variations across commuters result in differences in effectiveness of increasing parking cost, transit time reduction, and transit access improvement policies. The analysis includes examining several distributions for random parameters to test the impacts of restricting distributions to allow only normality, confirming the potential to improve model fit with alternative distributions.
  Authors: Habibian, Meeghat; Rezaei, Ali
  Authors: Habibian, Meeghat; Rezaei, Ali
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Passenger Transportation
  Session: 282
  Paper Number: 13-3509
• Which Is the Biggest Carrot? Comparing Nontraditional Incentives for Demand Management
  Abstract: While congestion charging has been heavily studied, relatively little literature focus on incentives and none is comparing different incentivization schemes. This paper investigates the impact of providing incentives on travelers' choices for their commute to work. In contrast to road pricing, an approach of offering incentives to decongest is gaining interest with field test in Europe, India, the US or Singapore. Many forms of incentives exist and the objective of this study is to analyze the potential of a variety of incentive schemes including offering monetary rewards such as cash, credit towards Apple Store, donations, lottery, or in-kind rewards such as HOV pass, guaranteed parking, free coffee or privileged status. This study analyzes the results of a stated-preference survey conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this survey the participants were presented with hypothetical scenarios where they could change their commute for an incentivized alternative. A nested-logit model was estimated from the SP survey and forecasts were made using the 2000 Bay Area Travel Survey. We found that our subjects are willing to change their commute, exhibiting a range of willingness to be paid $6.95-$18.98 per hour of travel time or $10.60-$28.93 per hour of schedule delay. Apple credit and cash proved to be the more efficient monetary rewards while HOV pass was value at $10.85 by the participants. As predicted by behavioral economics, travelers are much more sensitive to charges than to rewards. While application of the model within a traffic simulator is outside of the scope of this study, more limited forecast explore the direct demand response. Illustrative forecasts show that the main contribution to a shift outside the peak hour relies in an earlier departure time and the use of an alternative road or that the use of incentives to shift people follows a law of increasing returns.
  Authors: Leblanc, Romain; Walker, Joan L.
  Authors: Leblanc, Romain; Walker, Joan L.
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Passenger Transportation
  Session: 282
  Paper Number: 13-5039
• Quick-Scan Appraisal Method to Determine Cost-Effectiveness of Traffic and Demand Management Measures
  Abstract: This paper presents this quick-scan approach for assessing the cost-effectiveness of smaller and not-well demarcated transport measures that can be used as a first-scan while establishing packages to deal with certain transport problems. It adds to the available evaluation literature (see section 2) in relying on a combination of expert opinions as well as simple models rather than data intensive four-stage transport models. The approach consists of five steps, in the end yielding to an assessment of the cost-effectiveness of the considered measure. We illustrate the approach by applying it to determine the cost-effectiveness of a pricing measure, showing both the workings of the approach and the plausibility of the results. We conclude that the proposed method is applicable for providing a first, quick scan assessment. This assessment is useful in the first selection of planning, to support policy makers that need to choose in which (selection of) measures they need to invest, even if these measures have not yet been described or designed at a very detailed level.
  Authors: van Wee, Bert; Meurs, Henk; Perdok, Jan; Hoogendoorn, Serge
  Authors: van Wee, Bert; Meurs, Henk; Perdok, Jan; Hoogendoorn, Serge
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Paper
  Subject: Passenger Transportation
  Session: 282
  Paper Number: 13-2534
  Practice-Ready: Yes
• Quick-Scan Appraisal Method to Determine Cost-Effectiveness of Traffic and Demand Management Measures
  Authors: Meurs, Henk
  Authors: Meurs, Henk
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Passenger Transportation
  Session: 282
  Paper Number: 13-2534
• Carpooling in Switzerland: Public Attitudes and Growth Strategies
  Authors: Ciari, Francesco
  Authors: Ciari, Francesco
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Passenger Transportation
  Session: 282
  Paper Number: 13-2780
• Which Is the Biggest Carrot? Comparing Nontraditional Incentives for Demand Management
  Authors: Walker, Joan
  Authors: Walker, Joan
  Year: 2013
  Document Type: Presentation
  Subject: Passenger Transportation
  Session: 282
  Paper Number: 13-5039