A place for teleworking in transport policy

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Public Policy Seminar 26th September
2008 Human behaviours to moving peopleand goods
more intelligently
Inside the mind of the traveller
Professor Glenn Lyons Centre for Transport
Society University of the West of England,
Bristol, UK
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The mission

• The paraphrased ITSS mission is
• to understand the decision making process of
  travel with a view to identifying means of
  encouraging people to move more intelligently
  taking advantage of information and technologies
  to plan reliable, effective and timely journeys.

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Overview

• The role of technology in intelligent travel
• Impediments to people moving more intelligently
• The decision-making process of travel
• Awareness of and demand for travel information
  services
• Behaviour change and the process of change
• Concluding remarks

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The role of technology

• From data to information to knowledge
  toempowered decision making
• make the individual aware of the travel
  optionsavailable to them for a particular
  journey
• empower the individual to make morefully
  informed travel choices and
• assist the individual in beingable to
  successfully undertakeand complete the journey.
• Information should be useful,usable and used

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Impediments to peoplemoving more intelligently
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Decision maker caricatures
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Living with congestion

• Theres death, taxes, and traffic congestion
  is a fact of life
• A majority (60) do not think congestion is a
  serious problem for them personally
• Annoyance concerns unpredictability of journey
  time unanticipated congestion is more
  frustrating
• People cope with congestion
• Tactics regarding routes/times
• Unexpected congestion now seen asa reasonable
  excuse for being late
• Listening to the radio/CD playerand generally
  trying to relax

DfT (2005). Attitudes to congestion on motorways
and other roads.
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Passing the (travel) time

• People spend, on average, just over 2 hours per
  day on TV/DVDs/videos/radio/music
• Travel time use can compensate for (increased)
  travel time
• Travel time time out
• ITS versus ICTs tackling congestion versus
  capitalising upon it

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Daily behaviours

• Most travel is local and familiar 68 of trips
  are under 5 miles 84 are under 10 miles
• People are highly habitual, having predetermined
  primary and default means of travel for most or
  all journeys

National Travel Survey 2006
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The decision making process
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The decision making process

• Effort-accuracy trade-off
• current perceived accuracy versus effort of
  acquiring a more accurate picture
• Satisficing behaviour
• meeting minumum requirements (good enough)
• Bounded rationality
• Short-cut decision making requiring less
  information
• Anticipated regret
• If level of anticipated regret exceeds threshold
  then more information sought before decision is
  made

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Awareness of and demand for travel information
services
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Awareness of information services
SourceGfK-NOP, 2007. Base 2095. Prompted
awareness.
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Awareness of information services

• People appear to have preferred information
  services and a second backup option where
  necessary
• Awareness may not be a precursor to use in the
  age of search engines
• Travel information is not an end in itself, thus
  awareness likely to derive from need
• Need to use information tends to be occasional
  rather than regular

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Demand for information

• Greater demand to consider public transport use
  gives rise to greater demand for public transport
  information use
• Surveys of English drivers
• less than 20 of respondents had accessed
  information pre-trip and less than 30 en-route
• the proportion of respondents ever checking road
  conditions before travelling is 38
• Absolute demand nevertheless substantial e.g.
  35M telephone and 47M web enquiries to NRES in
  2005/06
• Feedback loop of information use and travel
  experience

Atkins, 2005
FDS, 2007
ORR, 2007
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Demand for information

• Demand for and importance of traveller
  information will be governed by
• overall share between familiar and unfamiliar
  journeys
• stability and predictability of transport system
  performance
• change in the relevant costs of alternative
  travel options

Unrealisedpotential
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Demand for what information?

• Pre-trip or en-route static or dynamic
• Destination, mode, timing or route
• Time, cost, comfort, convenience, safety

Maslow's hierarchyof needs
A hierarchy oftravel need?
I want to have the optimum journey
I want to have a fruitful journey
I want a secure, easy journey
I want the costs to be acceptable
I want to get to my destination
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When strategic behaviour changepotential is
greater

• Pricing signals carrots and sticks
• Residential relocation
• a quarter of people moving home reported changing
  their main mode of travel for commuting
• Other life events
• changing place of work, learning to
  drive,vehicle purchasing, having children,
  retirement etc.
• Changing norms and attitudes (e.g. climate
  change, obesity, information age)

Stanbridge and Lyons, 2006
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New behaviours inthe information age
shopping
banking
communicating
socialising
working
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Strategic behaviour change

• Consciously thinking aboutour behaviours and
  makinga conscious effort to (consider) changing
  is hard work!
• Transtheoretical model of behaviour change

http//www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/physical/starting
/
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Tactical behaviour change

• Minimising effort
• Cognitive the mental effort of (re)appraising
  travel options and pursuing a (new) course of
  action
• Affective nervous energy, worry, anxiety
  concerning uncertainty of journey
• Making traveller information available with
  minimal time and mental effort on the part of the
  traveller
• Making Plan B as effortless as possible (i.e.
  making the unfamiliar feel familiar)

Stradling, Meadows and Beatty, 2000
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Concluding remarks

• Beware technological determinism travel and
  travel choices are framed by the social practices
  of daily life
• In comparison to travel itself, travel
  information use is low however, in absolute
  terms information need is substantial
• A key unknown is the scale of demand for
  information that is not yet (satisfactorily) met
  by the information marketplace
• Travel information can assist appraisal of travel
  choice but it is much less likely to bring it
  about
• Information provision should align with need and,
  through user-centred design, be useful, usable
  and used