BMW - Weekly patterns in behaviour and mobility
Overview
Background & policy context:
Analysing mobility demand leads more and more research to take behaviour patterns in to account. One of the most serious approaches is activity-based models. The main idea in this promising line of thought is to view traffic not as a standalone phenomenon, obeying its own logic, but rather as a derived effect of activity patterns. Yet, most of the models (with rare exceptions like Mobidrive) are built on the paradigm that mobility is essentially linked to work and there-fore exhibits daily cycles.
Objectives:
The weekly patterns in behaviour and mobility project (BMW) is to work on two complementary views of weekly mobility: the longitudinal disaggregate behavioural aspects over the week and the transversal aggregate measure of traffic for each successive day of the same week. The objectives are to:
• collect data to validate the project view that weekly cycles are important in the household mobility decision;
• propose a descriptive analysis of the resulting weekly activity patterns and their impact on day to day variations in travel demand;
• reconcile these variations with observed variations measured in the field;
• enrich both activity-based demand models and dynamic origin/destination traffic models to include weekly cycles;
• disseminate the obtained conclusions with special attention given to policy implications and readability for non-specialists.
Methodology:
The main idea is to consider two urban kernels between which travel is frequent and not restricted to a single purpose. A sample of individuals will then be selected in both kernels, and a specially designed survey were conducted over a week, in order to describe activity patterns over that week with a reasonable degree of accuracy. In parallel, traffic counts and travel times was measured between the two kernels during the same week, both on motorways and secondary roads.
Share this page