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Sanabria Barboza, Diana Carolina

University of British Columbia

As urban sustainability gains prominence, understanding cycling behavior becomes crucial for enhancing mobility and environmental outcomes. This thesis addresses a key gap in cycling route choice modeling by exploring how cyclists’ preferences for energy expenditure influence their route decisions. Traditional models have largely overlooked this aspect of behavior, simplifying speed as a constant and treating energy expenditure merely as a travel outcome. To address this gap, the study integrates a measure of the disutility of energy expenditure relative to travel time (MRSet) into route choice models, aiming to capture the impact of time-energy trade-offs on route preferences. Several discrete choice modeling techniques were employed in 24 different model specifications, including path-size logit and mixed path-size logit models with both random utility maximization and random regret minimization decision rules, with and without latent segmentations, and integrating raw and normalized measures of MRSet (controlling for route, cyclist, and trip factors). Results indicate that including the normalized MRSet enhances model accuracy, with more energy-conservative cyclists exhibiting greater sensitivity to route length and grade. Study limitations include inconsistent results across model specifications, potential multicollinearity, and the risk of overfitting due to the inclusion of extensive heterogeneity parameters. Future research should focus on developing integrated route-speed choice models to provide a comprehensive understanding of time- and energy-influenced bicycle travel decisions. Additionally, examining the influence of energy preferences on mode choices and the impact of new technologies like electric pedal-assist devices can offer valuable insights for transportation planning. This study contributes to more nuanced understanding of heterogeneity in cycling behavior, enhancement to cyclist route choice modeling techniques, and offers practical implications for improving the attractiveness and equity of cycling infrastructure and policies, ultimately supporting urban sustainability goals.

Text

2024-11-12

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89650

Civil Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/