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Author
Date
2023Type
- Doctoral Thesis
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
This thesis is motivated by the desire to understand how to effectively measure and predict changes of individual mode choice behavior in the realm of transportation. The demand for passenger transport is derived from our travel behavior, which in essence boils down to the choices (to travel) we make and hence inherently links our preferences to behavior. Transport planners not only rely on revealed preference (observed) data to estimate travel demand models but often use stated preference data to do so in response to a fast-changing transport environment. Within that context, this thesis employs two key methods in order to investigate how people change their behavior in the light of hypothetical mode choice scenarios: stated choice experiments and choice models.
For the purpose of this work, a web-based approach to implement and conduct such experiments was developed. The framework should not only be helpful to researchers and practitioners in the transport planning community, but generally to everyone undertaking stated choice experiments.
Each of the chapters in this thesis approached a unique aspect of mode choice by applying those two methods.
A first case study examined how choice behavior would change if a long-distance bus service were introduced in Switzerland, competing with cars and public transportation. According to the findings, and given the assumption of a liberalized Swiss transport market, such a service would be difficult establish, but even more to sustain due to an inelastic demand pattern. The bus market share was estimated at around 8.5%, which likely represents an upper bound based on the dense bus stop network assumed. The estimated value of travel time for the bus is similar to the car, but higher than for public transportation, which indicates that the participants prefer the comfort level of the latter over the bus. Furthermore, long-distance buses mainly attract younger individuals who are particularly price-sensitive.
The second case study investigated the preferences for the use of urban ridepooling in Hamburg, Germany, exemplified by MOIA, a subsidiary of Volkswagen Group. The key drivers in choosing a ridepooling service like MOIA are primarily travel cost, travel time, trip purpose and distance. While for commutes, in terms of value of travel time, MOIA can not compete with public transport and cars, the results indicated similar values for MOIA and public transport for leisure trips of distances up to 6 km, which can be attributed to comfort-related effects. For longer distances, however, this effect vanished and was compensated by comparatively higher travel costs, leading to increasing values. An important finding for MOIA, as the results support the main use case of MOIA in Hamburg, although only for shorter distances.
The last case study delved into the idea of a Tradable Mobility Credit Scheme in the city of Munich, Germany, and how it could help to promote the shift to more sustainable modes and internalize external costs. On top of the usual (internal) travel costs, a monthly mobility budget in the form of MobilityCoins was hypothetically introduced, which accounted for both the external costs and benefits associated with the modes under consideration. With respect to these coins, the results indicated that respondents showed greater cost sensitivity the lower the remaining budget was and the fewer days they were into a given month. Regarding the values of travel time, the largest variance in the values was observed for cars, presumably induced by higher external costs that were imposed and influenced the perceived overall cost, potentially shifting users away from using it. However, the approach did not allow an investigation into real-world trading of these MobilityCoins in the market. Show more
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https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000650086Publication status
publishedExternal links
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Publisher
ETH ZurichSubject
TRAVEL DEMAND (TRANSPORTATION AND TRAFFIC); Stated Choice Experiment; Travel behaviorOrganisational unit
03521 - Axhausen, Kay W. (emeritus) / Axhausen, Kay W. (emeritus)
02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG
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ETH Bibliography
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