Attitudinal Market Segmentation Approach to Mode Choice and Ridership Forecasting: Structural Equation Modeling

Abstract

The San Francisco Bay Area Water Transit Authority is evaluating expanded ferry service, as required by the California Legislature. As part of this process, Cambridge Systematics developed forecasts using a combination of market research strategies and the addition of nontraditional variables into the mode choice modeling process. The focus of this work was on expanding the mode choice model to recognize travelers' attitudes and different market segments. Structural equation modeling was used to simultaneously identify the attitudes of travel behaviors and the causal relationships between traveler's socioeconomic profile and traveler attitudes. Six attitudinal factors were extracted, and three of these were used to partition the ferry-riding market into eight segments. These market segments were used to estimate stated preference mode choice models for 14 alternative modes, which separated the travelers' reactions to time savings by market segment and which recognized that mode choices are different for market segments that are sensitive to travel stress or the desire to help the environment. The new mode choice models were applied within the framework of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's regional travel model and calibrated to match modal shares, modes of access to each ferry terminal, ridership by route and time period, and person trips by mode at screening line crossings. Additional validation tests of significant changes in ferry service in recent years were used to confirm the reasonableness of the stated preference model. The model has been applied for three future year alternatives and to test the sensitivities of pricing, service changes, and alternative transit modes.

Investigating the subjective and objective factors influencing teenagers’ school travel mode choice – An integrated choice and latent variable model

“…Similarly, studies have examined the impact of environmental consciousness or protection tendency (based on diverse indicators collected from attitudinal surveys), revealing that environmental consciousness positively affects the probability of choice of active transport (walking and cycling), and reduces the probability of choosing private motorized vehicles (for example, see Outwater et al, 2003;Anable, 2005;Hunecke et al, 2007;Shiftan et al, 2008;Atasoy et al, 2010;Daly et al, 2011;Rieser-Schlusser and Axhausen, 2012; 1 While it is true that the power of the ICLV models arises in part through the use of a small set of latent variables to generate a parsimonious factor-analytic error dependency structure across a large number of alternatives in a choice model, and across these alternatives with other continuous/ordinal outcomes, the point is that almost all earlier studies have placed very restrictive factor-analytic structures by specifying a single latent variable (due to computational problems otherwise) rather than attempting to test (and capture) a richer factor analytic structure by specifying more latent variables. Tyrinopoulos and Antoniou, 2012;Hess et al, 2013).…”

Factors affecting modal choice in urban mobility

“…In their work aiming to develop an attitudinal market segmentation approach to mode choice and ridership forecasting, Outwater et al [37] concluded that "individuals more aware of environmental issues are more motivated to use public transport, while on the contrary travelers more sensitive to stress tend to prefer car over public transport for non-work trips".…”

A Framework for the Assessment and Policy Development of Water Transit Services in Dubai, UAE

“…Previous work in the area of marine operation and services tackled issues of planning for services (Cedar 2006), evaluation of services (Odek and Barthen 2009), forecasting demand (Laube and Dyer 2007;Outwater et al 2003), best practices for public outreach (Camay et al 2008), marine network design (Wang and Lo 2008), and intermodal modeling (East and Armstrong 1999). Ceder (2006) presented a planning approach with an evaluation procedure for making the best use of existing water and pier resources to improve public ferry transit through the provision of commercially-viable services in Hong Kong.…”

“…Laube and Dyer (2007) presented a model for demand forecasting of the ferry service system to serve the National Park of New York Harbor. Outwater et al (2003) tackled the expansion of mode choice models to account for traveler attitudes and different market segments. The causal relationships between traveler socio-economic profile and travel attitudes towards ferry services of San Fransisco Bay Area were integrated into the mode choice models.…”