Doctoral Dissertations

Tae Youn Jang

Date of Award

5-1996

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Civil Engineering

Major Professor

Frederick J. Wegmann

Committee Members

Arun Chatterjee, Lee D. Han, Bruce A. Halston

Abstract

As travel costs increase, individuals may try to consolidate trips into a chain, resulting in an increase of nonhome-based trips and a decrease of home-based trips. This study analyzes the trip-chaining behavior related to work and the 1990 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey data is used. Nine work-related trip-chaining patterns are developed based on the sequential link of activities occurring in a day. The study explores trip linkages with their first trip starting at home and their last trip ending at home. If all activities made by an individual in a day are related, resulting in interdependence with time and spatial constraints, it is desirable that they should be sequentially analyzed from the first trip to the last trip.

More than sixty percent of trips for work in urban area represents complex trip- chaining patterns. From the results of chi-square test, the study finds that choosing each trip-chaining pattern is dependent upon socio-demographic characteristics of individuals. The relationship between trip-chaining patterns and socio-demographic characteristics implies that changes in individuals' characteristics means changes in choosing each trip- chaining pattern. From the results of analysis of variance (ANOVA), each gender has significant variation between trip-chaining patterns in trip rates for non-work activities, travel distance, and travel time. There are also significant gender differences in trip rates and travel resources in each trip-chaining pattern, resulting from t-test. Simultaneous equation models are built to find causal relationships among variables in each trip-chaining pattern. Two-stage least square method is used. Endogenous variables, which are considered to have two-way causation among them, are the number of trips, travel distance, and travel time.

The study confirms that socio-demographic characteristics of individuals considerably influence the opportunities in making travel activity choices, which leads to different trip-chaining behavior for work. Females are likely to make more non-work trips to satisfy trip purposes and they use less travel resources in trip-chaining behavior. These tendencies are particularly of concern to transportation policy and planning since individuals' trip-chaining behavior may ultimately change trip generation. Changes in characteristics of individuals may mean changes in urban travel patterns, resulting in uncertainty in forecasting future amount of travel. As a result, effort toward more convincing travel demand models should be made using trip-chaining behavior concept.

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