Exploring Susceptibility to Use Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) Shubham Jain (ORCiD: 0000-0002-2719-586X) SUBMITTED IN TOTAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY – ENGINEERING Department of Infrastructure Engineering The University of Melbourne Australia July 2016 Supervisors: Prof. Stephan Winter Dr. Nicole Ronald A/Prof. Russell Thompson Abstract Shared transportation providing point-to-point services on demand, although not an unknown element in urban mobility, has started gaining more presence with growth of information technology in the transport sector. These forms of transport modes will supplement or compete with existing public and private transport. Their mixed reception in the past is a matter of concern especially before making investment decisions. To find feasible opportunities of implementation, an estimation of the demand patterns in the target city is desirable. This research provides and evaluates a methodology for this estimation that avoids ambivalent and expensive user surveys. Demand patterns are caused by the spatial variation of socio-economic and demographic characteristics, family structures, and travel behavior over the city. Thus, the new methodology takes into account the use of socio-economic and demographic data and current trip data from travel surveys of a sample of the population, along with usage patterns of existing similar services elsewhere in the world. Demographic factors such as gender, age, occupation, income, household structure, motor vehicle ownership, and driving licence availability together with trip characteristics such as current trip purpose, walking time, and waiting time can be analyzed to come up with demand patterns, and their variation in the city. Usage patterns from existing similar services worldwide are then used to explore the overall spatial pattern of susceptibility of DRT in a target city. The outcomes identify more favorable areas for implementation of DRT. The methodology can be validated by applying it on existing transport modes in the target city which will also help in understanding the nature of competition among the proposed and existing transport modes. As the review of operating services is generic, it can be used in conjunction with respective travel surveys in different places. Similarly, review can be done for any proposed transport mode, and provided methodology can be applied for exploring demand patterns. The methodology is tested for Greater Melbourne in this study. Further, synthetic population is created at household and person levels for Greater Melbourne. PopSynWin, which is based on Iterative Proportional Fitting (IPF) algorithm, and PopGen, which is based on Iterative Proportional Update (IPU) algorithm, are used as tools for this purpose, generating two different synthetic populations. Both the generated populations are compared statistically, and the better one is used to assign travel diaries from sample travel surveys for a study region. The methodology to explore the susceptibility to use DRT, provided in this research, is applied on individual travel diaries to further explore demand patterns at a finer granularity. The content of this thesis has been presented in following research forums: • Jain, S., N. Ronald, R. Thompson and S. Winter (2016). "Predicting susceptibility to use demand responsive transport using demographic and trip characteristics of the population." Travel Behavior and Society, Volume 6, Pages 44–56, doi:10.1016/j.tbs.2016.06.001. • Jain, S., N. Ronald and S. Winter (2015). Creating a Synthetic Population: A Comparison of Tools. 3rd Conference of the Transportation Research Group of India, Kolkata, India. • Jain, S., N. Ronald, R. Thompson, R. Kutadinata and S. Winter (2015). Exploring susceptibility of shared mobility in urban space. Disruptive Mobility - A Global Summit Investigating Sustainable Futures, Cambridge. US. • Jain, S., N. Ronald, R. Thompson and S. Winter (2015). Towards Agent Based Activity–Travel Pattern Modelling to Predict Travel Demand for Demand Responsive Transport in Melbourne. Conference of Australian Institutes of Transport Research, Melbourne, Australia. • Ronald, N., Z. Navidi, Y. Wang, M. Rigby, S. Jain, R. Kutadinata, R. Thompson and S. Winter (2016). "Mobility Patterns in Shared, Autonomous, and Connected Urban Transport."Book chapter, Disruptive Mobility (under review). Declaration This is to certify that i. the thesis comprises only my original work towards the Masters except where indicated, ii. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, iii. the thesis is less than 50000 words in length, inclusive of footnotes, but exclusive of tables, maps and bibliography. July 22nd, 2016 Shubham Jain Acknowledgements I wish to express special gratitude to Prof. Stephan Winter that he provided me the opportunity to do this research under his supervision, showed me how to observe, plan, and think like a researcher, and guided me through all scientific obstacles. I would like to thank my co-supervisors Dr. Nicole Ronald and A/Prof. Russell Thompson for guiding me during this research, and their contribution in terms of time and knowledge. I would like to express my deepest gratitude to a few very special people - my parents and sister, who were always encouraging and supportive from all possible aspects, so that I could focus on my research. Special thanks to Zahra, Rahul, Aiswarya, Sudeep, Vineet, Hardik, and all my friends, colleagues, and housemates in Melbourne, who assisted me with many things, so that I could keep going. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Research Motivation ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Research Hypothesis ........................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Research Approach ............................................................................................................. 3 1.4 Study Area ........................................................................................................................... 4 1.5 Research Design .................................................................................................................. 5 1.6 Thesis Structure ................................................................................................................... 7 Chapter 2: Literature Review .............................................................................................. 8 2.1 Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) ................................................................................ 8 2.2 Understanding Travel Demand ......................................................................................... 11 2.3 Preference Surveys ............................................................................................................ 14 2.4 The Effect of Socio-Economic, Demographic and Trip Characteristics on Travel Behavior .................................................................................................................................. 17 Chapter 3: Identifying Parameters Favorable to DRT ...................................................... 20 Chapter 4: Predicting Susceptibility of Regions to Use DRT ............................................. 30 4.1 Data and Methodology ...................................................................................................... 30 4.2 Analysis of Travel Survey Data ........................................................................................ 36 4.3 Findings ............................................................................................................................. 43 4.4 Validation .......................................................................................................................... 47 4.5 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 60 Chapter 5: Predicting Likeliness of Trips to Convert to DRT ........................................... 62 5.1 Synthetic Population ......................................................................................................... 63 5.1.1 Background ................................................................................................................ 64 5.1.2 Data Preparation ......................................................................................................... 66 5.1.3 Synthesis .................................................................................................................... 67 5.1.4 Results ........................................................................................................................ 67 5.1.5 Interpretation of Results ............................................................................................. 76 5.2 Travel Diary Assignment .................................................................................................. 77 5.3 Exploring DRT Susceptibility of Trips in Yarra Ranges .................................................. 82 5.4 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 92 Chapter 6: Conclusions .....................................................................................................