Chapter 26: Workshop Synthesis: Methods for Capturing Multi-Horizon Choices

Transportation researchers are being confronted by new questions about decisions that span multiple time horizons. These include long-term strategic commitments such as residence location or mobility tools (e.g. vehicle ownership, public transport season tickets, or subscriptions to shared vehicle services); tactical short-term daily choices such as alternative destinations, travel timing, route, mode or accompanying persons; and en route choices such as spontaneous activity stops or re-routing. In the longer time frame of a year or several years, households may change in composition, acquire a vehicle, move to another house, or have a member join or depart from the labour force or change jobs. Travel surveys sometimes include the history of choices over long-time frames, but the interdependence between choices over such long time frames is poorly understood and rarely addressed. This workshop explored the complexities of measuring and analysing these multi-horizon choices and their interdependencies.