Controlling Their Transportation Destiny

-

One of the automobile’s most attractive traits is the ability to control you transit. It provides the user with the ability to decide when you go, where you go, and to an extent how fast you go. These factor’s can be helpful for those who have complex schedules that don’t allow for the use of different methods of transportation. However, these are not the only people using the automobile. The illusion of choice is the most appealing part of the automobile, but can it be an appealing part of other modes of transportation?
“Those who switched to public transportation were more predisposed to switching, were more cost-conscious, and had more favorable perceptions and attitudes towards public transportation. Those who did not switch became happier with their cars,” was the finding of Maya Abou-Zeid and Moshe Ben-Akiva in their paper “Travel Mode Switching: Comparison of Findings from two Public transportation experiments.”  Abou-Zeid and Be-Akiva discovered that people became happier with whatever transportation they had selected. Even those who took public transit became happier with their commute. In his CityLab article covering Abou-Zeid and Ben-Akiva’s study, Eric Jaffe summed it up as “this renewed affection might have occurred because drivers could now say they'd thoroughly evaluated their commute options and decided that the car was the way to go.” The same could be said for those who opted into public transportation. It is possible they determined that public transportation fits their schedule and life better than the automobile. A similar study conducted in Switzerland found a similar conclusion, stating “satisfaction ratings are affected by cognitive awareness, whereby the disruption of routine travel conditions makes people think more fully about their travel happiness with different modes of transportation” (Witter, Bierlaire, Kaufmann, 2012).
Both studies found, commuters were most happy when they felt like they had beaten the system. That they had done the research, ran some tests, and picked what best fit their lives. So maybe as a nation we don’t really favor the car, we just favor being in control.



Abou-Zeid, M, & Ben-Akiva, M. (2012) “Travel Mode Switching: comparison of findings from two public transportation experiments.”
Bierlaire, B, Kaufman, V, Witter, R. (2012) “Happiness and travel mode switching: Findings from a Swiss public transportation experiment.”
 Jafffe, E. “Even American Drivers like Transit more than they think”. The Atlantic Cities. December 12, 2012.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The worst congestion in the world

-
Image
While I was going to school at UCLA, the car-culture was very apparent to me. The city also felt incredibly spread out, and it would sometimes take me more than an hour by bus to get downtown. I did not own a car the entire time I lived in LA, and I felt very limited. I quickly became bored with Westwood, the neighborhood that UCLA is in, and the only neighborhood that was within walking distance of my apartment and I had to rely on my friends to drive me to the beach or other neighborhoods. I was surprised when I read in Sorenson’s article, “Moving Los Angeles”, that despite Los Angeles reputation for sprawl, it is actually quite dense when compared to the nation’s 14 largest metropolitan areas. In class, we talked about how Los Angeles is the only major city that has become denser since the 1960s. Los Angeles is not as dense as New York City, but it is quite dense at a regional scale. The suburbs are denser on average than suburbs in other cities. Reflecting on this more, I realized...
Read more

Uh oh. Does Vision Zero Reinforce White Supremacy in the United States?

-
Many US cities, including Portland, have adopted Vision Zero strategies as a response to pedestrian and bicyclist traffic safety needs. Vision Zero, a traffic safety approach which originated in Sweden, is a program that aims to ultimately reduce the number of traffic-related-deaths to zero (Vision Zero Network 2018). The program’s approach is multifaceted, using public education, street design, legislation and law enforcement to reach its desired outcomes (Elevbakk 2007, Trujillo 2014). Sounds like a win-win, right? Ah, but let’s not forget our mantra of equity: “who gets what when and why?”. There is often more to the policy than we see at first glance. Indeed, Vision Zero does have its critics. Critiques of Vision Zero focus on concerns related to equity – including issues related to location of infrastructural improvements, and racially biased enforcement of traffic related laws (Bliss 2016). In cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, mobility justice groups have raised c...
Read more

The age of automation

-
Image
Cities across the nation, including Phoenix, Boston, and San Francisco, have already begun allowing transportation network companies (TNCs), such as Uber and Lyft, to test out new autonomous vehicle (AV) technology. However, after the March 18 Uber crash, which resulted in the death of a woman, many cities put a halt to the testing. Despite this incident, cities have not terminated their plans to introduce self-driving vehicles onto their streets. Some cities, including Boston, MA, are gradually introducing AVs, starting with small driverless zones. Philadelphia, PA, has established a rigorous testing process. AVs must meet important standards, such as emergency braking and basic driving capabilities before the vehicles are released to the streets (Krauss, 2018) . Many cities are still excited about the potential benefits of AVs. The Boston municipal government argues that the introduction of AVs could lead to improved accessibility for people living with the aging population and ...
Read more