Identifying main drivers for students and staff members’ mode choice or to work/study from home: A case study in Australia

Abstract

Ride-pooling remains a promising emerging mode with a potential to contribute towards urban sustainability and emission reductions. However, recent studies revealed complexity and diversity among travellers’ ride-pooling aptitudes. So far, ride-poling analyses assumed homogeneity and/or determinism of ride-pooling travellers. This, as we demonstrate, leads to a false assessment of ride-pooling system performance. We experiment with an actual NYC demand from 2016 and classify travellers into four groups of various ride-pooling behaviour (value of time and penalty for sharing), as reported in the recent SP study. We replicate their random behaviour to obtain meaningful distributions. Heterogeneity assumption proves to have a significant impact on the system. The performance indicators are shifted compared to the deterministic scenario. Albeit the high variability of travellers’ preferences, system-wide results remain within reasonably narrow confidence intervals.