Suchergebnisse

This study employs a comprehensive suite of accessibility indices to investigate whether American cities are designed in such a way that the locations of goods, services, and other opportunities favor certain socio-economic groups over others. In so doing, the study's findings contribute to pressing policy issues such as social exclusion. Seven counties of the Louisville, KY-IN MSA serve as the study area for the investigation. Data are derived from three sources: a geocoded travel diary survey that was conducted in the study area in 2000, a geocoded database of all urban opportunities in the study area, and a database containing shortest path travel times between the locations of households and urban opportunities. Accessibility indices (i.e., gravity, cumulative opportunity, and proximity) are computed for households found in the trip diary survey. Furthermore, these indices are defined for 34 types of opportunities: four aggregate types (i.e., retail, service, leisure, and religious) and 30 disaggregate types representing the 10 most popular destinations for trips for each of the first three aggregate types. Non-parametric Wilcoxon rank sum tests are used to compare the accessibilities of five socio-economic groups (i.e., individuals residing in rural communities, individuals residing in single-person and single-parent households, individuals residing in low-income households, women, and the elderly) to their counterparts. Except for individuals residing in rural areas, our findings indicate that groups, which conventional wisdom would suggest are at risk of social exclusion, are not disadvantaged in terms of accessibility.

AbstractRecent anecdotal evidence suggests that millennials (individuals born following Generation X and between the early 1980s and early 2000s) are characterized by different travel behavior characteristics, including being less likely to have a valid driver's license and less likely to drive than their older counterparts. The old, conversely, represent a rapidly growing segment of the Canadian population that have grown up with the personal automobile and are dependent on it. But are there differences in trip purpose and timing between different generational cohorts? Using data from Statistics Canada's 2010 General Social Survey "Time Use" cycle, this paper evaluates the purpose and timing of trips across generational cohorts, with the paper distinguishing between millennials, generation X, baby boomers, and the greatest generation. Descriptive statistics are used to characterize the purpose and timing of trips, and multivariate analyses of peak versus non‐peak departure‐time models offers insights into the differences and similarities across cohorts. Findings suggest that the timing of travel, along with reasons for travel, are broadly similar across the generations.

AbstractUsing survey data of millennials and older adults in Hamilton, Ontario, this exploratory study sought to identify daily travelers based on their attitudes and perceptions toward transportation modes using latent class analysis. Four daily traveler types are identified—"walk and transit‐oriented travelers," "car‐oriented commuters," "multimodal travelers," and "car‐oriented travelers." The study also examined the association of different sociodemographic characteristics and trip attributes with the four traveler types. Findings suggest that heterogeneity exists within travel‐related attitudes among different traveler types. Further, heterogeneous traveler types exist among individuals belonging to the same generation, with the same living arrangements and possession of a driver's license.

This special section of the Journal of Transport and Land Use focuses on location choice modeling underlying activity-travel behavior and includes five manuscripts that were originally presented in Toronto, Canada at the Thirteenth International Conference on Travel Behaviour Research, organized by the International Association for Travel Behaviour Research (IATBR).

Recent declines of many seabird populations have placed increased emphasis on determining the status of potentially threatened species. However, the burrow-nesting habits and inter-annual fluctuation in breeding numbers of some species make trend detection difficult, and so knowledge of their population dynamics often remains coarse. Here we report observed fluctuations, and assess the efficacy of monitoring of sooty shearwaters (Puffinus griseus), on three islands in southern New Zealand between the breeding seasons of 1996–97 and 2004–05. Apart from a steady increase in burrow-occupant density at one island, few significant trends in abundance measures were detected. Considerable variation among individual sites within islands led to high uncertainty in island-wide trend estimates. Simulations showed that the measurements of occupant density have a limited ability of detecting all but very pronounced trends, whereas changes in burrow-entrance density are more likely to be detected. Annual fluctuations in the proportion of occupied burrows at individual sampling sites were highly synchronous within islands and reasonably synchronous between two of the islands, suggesting that breeding numbers are at least partly determined by broad-scale factors. The large declines in the abundance of sooty shearwaters reported from the late 1980s to mid-1990s appear not to have continued through our monitoring period. Lack of adequate within- and among-island replication, and short time series of data may severely reduce our ability reliably to detect population trends in many studies of burrowing Procellariiformes.

Monitoring of breeding success in burrow-nesting seabirds is problematic, owing to the difficulties of detecting occupants in complex burrow systems. We summarise 6 years of monitoring the breeding success of sooty shearwater (tītī, muttonbird, Puffinus griseus) on two southern New Zealand islands, The Snares and Whenua Hou, with a portable infrared camera system. Breeding attempts were monitored three times during the breeding season, i.e. egg laying, hatching and fledging. Overall breeding success was calculated in two stages. First, we estimated breeding success for each island–site–year combination with a model that allowed for imperfect detection of an egg or chick and accounted for the proportion of the breeding season that was covered by monitoring. The resulting estimates for each island were then analysed with a linear model, to provide a single estimate for that island. Breeding success was found to be highly variable and non-synchronous between islands, with the average proportion of eggs successfully fledging on The Snares (0.35, 0.20–0.52; mean and 95% creditable interval) being considerably lower and more variable than that on Whenua Hou (0.76, 0.70–0.82). Probability of detecting a breeding attempt was higher on The Snares whereas correcting for the proportion of the season monitored had a variable effect, reducing The Snares and Whenua Hou estimates by 27% and 7% respectively. The implications of these findings with respect to the demographic modelling of burrow-nesting species are discussed.

ABSTRACTSocieties in many developed nations around the world are aging. Over the past decade, a growing body of research has emerged internationally in an effort to anticipate and prepare for the transport challenges posed by this unprecedented demographic change. This paper contributes to this line of research by offering new insights into senior travel behavior focusing on the recent Canadian experience. Using weekday data from the 1992 and 2005 General Social Surveys on time use, changes in the number of trips, the duration of trips, trip mode, and trip timing are evaluated for urban seniors. In contrast to the experiences of many other developed nations, analysis of the first three indicators of behavioral change refutes the notion that "automobility" has increased in Canada over the 13‐year period. While this finding is encouraging, it is tempered by the fact that Canadian seniors who choose to travel by car are doing so increasingly during the morning and evening peak periods. The results from a peak versus non‐peak departure‐time model that pools data from both years offer important insights into factors driving this change. For instance, the results suggest that the propensity to start a trip during rush hour has increased over time for non‐work trip purposes.