Shigeyuki Kurose

Spatial context and the complexity of daily travel patterns : an international comparison

The analysis of travel patterns is an important research topic in transportation research and urban planning. It provides the background information necessary to better understand the complex relationship between urban structure, the transportation system and household travel patterns. To what extent do travel behaviour reflect the properties of the urban structure and the transportation network, or do these patterns largely follow their own regularities? Can different patterns be observed across different space-time settings, or can common patterns be observed, largely independent from such contexts? To better understand these relationships, this paper reports on some of the findings of analyses, conducted to identify underlying structures in various aspects of travel patterns. Travel patterns, derived from activity and travel diary data collected in Portland (USA), Midlands (UK), Fukuoka (Japan), Canadian metropolitan areas, and the South-Rotterdam region (The Netherlands) are compared. The results indicate that travel patterns are largely independent from spatial setting, except for some extreme cases.

Classifying Pedestrian Shopping Behaviour According to Implied Heuristic Choice Rules

Our aim in this paper is to build and test a model which classifies and identifies pedestrian shopping behaviour in a shopping centre by using temporal and spatial choice heuristics. In particular, the temporal local-distance-minimising, total-distance-minimising, and global-distance-minimising heuristic choice rules and spatial nearest-destination-oriented, farthest-destination-oriented, and intermediate-destination-oriented choice rules are combined to classify and identify the stop sequences and route choices of shopping pedestrians. First, several linear networks with a single entry node and a few stop nodes are investigated. For these networks, the global-distance-minimising and spatial choice heuristics classify and identify the sequences of stops very well. Although the local-distance-minimising choice rule identifies pedestrian route choice quite well, another heuristic is needed to improve the identification. In this paper a new, attractive-street-oriented heuristic is suggested to improve the identification ability of the model. This choice rule suggests that shopping pedestrians will never leave the attractive shopping streets before completing their shopping. The model is then applied to empirical data of pedestrian shopping behaviour in Veldhoven City Centre in The Netherlands. The findings of this application suggest that the model based on choice heuristics might be useful to classify and identify the sequences of stops and route choice behaviour of shopping pedestrians in a shopping centre.

TIME ALLOCATION IN URBAN AND TRANSPORT SETTINGS: AN INTERNATIONAL, INTER-URBAN PERSPECTIVE

This paper reports the findings of analyses, conducted to identify regularities and differences underlying various aspects of activity-travel patterns across a set of cities, regions in the world. Activity-travel patterns, derived from activity diary data collected in Portland (USA), Midlands (UK), Fukuoka (Japan), Canadian metropolitan areas, and the South-Rotterdam region (The Netherlands) are compared. The results indicate that although idiosyncratic differences exist between the city regions, there is also considerable evidence of similarities between the city regions.

A method for identifying accessibility properties of pedestrian shopping networks

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to propose and test a method for comparing road networks from the viewpoint of pedestrian flows. The method is based on a pedestrian flow model. The road networks can be compared by using the first eigenvector of the transition matrix, which describes pedestrian movement between nodes of the network. In this application, the first eigenvectors of transition matrices are calculated and compared among the road networks of pre-modern cities in Europe, the Middle East, and Japan. The conclusion is that the method for comparing pedestrian road networks by using the first eigenvector of the transition matrix is useful.