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Thesis title: Developing an Activity Based Travel Demand Model to Investigate the Impact of New Mobility Services
Primary supervisor: Dr. Maria Kamargianni
Secondary supervisor: Professor Andreas Schafer
Start date: September 2017
End date: August 2022
Sponsor: EPSRC
Rapid technological advancement and development of the sharing economy in recent years has resulted in the emergence of numerous disruptive technologies in the transport sector. Adding to traditional transport means (such as private car, bus, metro, rail, taxi), new options like ride hailing, car sharing, bike sharing, mobility-as-a-service, or even the potential of autonomous vehicles are becoming available to people (CAR, 2016). With a growing share of the population demonstrating a high propensity to adopt and use new technology in their demand for services, the transport sector is ripe for significant changes and development. These new mobility services could induce a paradigm shift when we think about urban transport especially. They could also bring about improvements to some of the largest challenges for transport considering sustainability: congestion, public health, energy use and emissions. However, new mobility services would bring about complex changes which are difficult to capture and understand using current tools. As such, new methodologies and tools that can capture the dynamic nature of the field and help quantify the impact of these disruptive technologies must be developed.
Given the novelty of these technologies, data collection techniques struggle to capture the necessary information for comprehensive analysis and modelling. Existing studies and models do not go far enough to understand the impact on the whole sector (considering supply and demand) and tend to focus only on traditional transport modes. This research will address these shortcomings and develop a dynamic travel behaviour model with an extended choice set. The comprehensive activity based travel demand model will then be used to analyse the impact that new mobility services may have on passenger transport in major urban areas.
Biography
Kuba Muscat is a PhD student at the UCL Energy Institute. He holds a BASc in Arts and Sciences majoring in Business and Economics from UCL (2016). Prior to starting his PhD, he completed MSc Transport and City Planning at the Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. Outside of university, Kuba has undertaken various work placements and internships, including IBM and local government.
