Modelling Weekend Travel - Worth the Extra Effort?

This paper describes how transport models tend to be built for peak periods and an average working day to cover the busiest times and largest annual proportions of demand. Building a similar representation from scratch for Saturdays and Sundays, as well as your average working day, may well be desirable, but will potentially triple survey budgets. The paper shows how surveys already tend to be the most expensive element of any practical implementation. Travel demand surveys, such as roadside interviews, will need to be carried out with the same rigor as for weekdays, but concentrated on fewer days. Household survey sample rates for weekend days will need to be the same as for weekdays. However, savings can be made by issuing multi-day travel diaries, but compensation will be required for attrition on later survey days. So why bother with the weekend? The weekend is a large portion of the seven-day week, demand is also high, and there are city and intercity locations whose greatest pressure is experienced during weekend periods. Also, transport schemes will inevitably have an effect on weekend demand and in this time of austerity, every penny of potential benefit of transport investment should be accounted for. Given the evidence of considerable weekend congestion problems on highways and around urban centers, it makes sense to investigate the cost-effective development of practical travel demand models for weekend days. This paper investigates whether and how weekend travel patterns differ from those observed during weekdays.

• Record URL:
  • https://aetransport.org/past-etc-papers/conference-papers-pre-2009/conference-papers-2010
• Corporate Authors:

  Association for European Transport (AET)

  1 Vernon Mews, Vernon Street, West Kensington
  London W14 0RL,    
• Authors:
  • Oliver, Michael
  • van Vuren, Tom
• Conference:
  • European Transport Conference, 2010
  • Location: Glasgow Scotland, United Kingdom
  • Date: 2010-10-11 to 2010-10-13
• Publication Date: 2010

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: Figures; Photos; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 31p
• Monograph Title: European Transport Conference, 2010 Proceedings

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Interviewing; Traffic congestion; Transportation planning; Travel demand; Travel diaries; Travel surveys; Weekends
• Subject Areas: Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01352568
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Sep 26 2011 7:58AM