Chapter 17: Time Period Choice Modelling

The reasons why trip-timing is of interest to planners and analysts have been set out in Chapter 23 by Mahmassani. That Chapter focuses primarily on trip-timing decisions for urban commuters, and paid particular interest to the day-to-day dynamics of the adjustment process. In this companion Chapter, we first discuss some of the underlying theoretical issues in a little more depth, and then report on some recent models that have been developed.

The reasons why people choose to travel at the times that they do are many and various. In general, they will be a combination of the need to meet “deadlines” for particular activities and the sequential planning of activities in different locations. While social scientists may find this a fruitful subject to analyse and model per se, within the transport field the interest is mainly on understanding the circumstances under which travellers might change their time of travel, particularly in response to pricing and other signals.