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Weibo Li (李卫波)

Thesis title: A Transport Mode Choice Study for a Developing Country: Past Habits, Today’s Progress and Future Opportunities

Primary supervisor: Dr. Maria Kamargianni
Secondary supervisor: Prof. Andreas Schafer

Starting date: Jan 2015
Projected completion date: Jan 2018

Developing countries are facing increasing challenges to make urban mobility sustainable and to tackle the continuously growing air pollution and congestion caused by the rapid increase in car ownership. As part of a broad strategy to achieve sustainable urban mobility, shared mobility services such as bike-sharing and car-sharing could potentially contribute to car usage decrease. However, most of the developing countries have limited quantified evidence regarding the factors affecting mode choice behaviour and this hinders policy makers from effectively promoting the usage of shared mobility. This research project intends to bridge the gap by working from three dimensions: identifying the impacts of life-changing events occurred in the past on mode choice behaviour, revealing how the choices of shared mobility services are affected by a variety of factors at present, and evaluating the effectiveness of future policy pathways aiming at promoting the demand for bike-sharing and car sharing. The case study city is Taiyuan (China), which runs one of the most successful bike-sharing schemes in developing countries and is expected to have car-sharing under operation in near future. Both stated and revealed preference mode choice data were collected via a paper-based questionnaire survey launched in 2015. The sample included 15,000 individuals and eventually 9,499 of them provided with valid responses. A series of discrete choice models (e.g. multinomial logit, nested logit, mixed nested logit, hybrid choice model) were developed to serve the aforementioned analyses

Biography

Weibo is working towards his PhD at the UCL Energy Institute with an interest in transport demand policy. His research expertise includes survey design, data handling and choice modelling.

In 2013, he was awarded with Honour degree of Upper Second in BSc (Econ) Economics at UCL Department of Economics; in 2014, he was awarded with Merit class in MSc Economics and Policy of Energy and the Environment at UCL Energy Institute. He is also a postgraduate teaching assistant at UCL Department of Economics on the following undergraduate modules: Mathematics for Economics (1st year), Microeconomics (2nd year) and Economics of Growth (3rd year).

Weibo also has chatiable interests and is on the board of trustees of Ofund (Overseas Chinese Students Children’s Fund). 

Publications

Working papers

Li, W. and Kamargianni, M. (2018). Promoting car-sharing while suppressing private car usage: a policy impact analysis. Submitted to Transportation.

Li, W. and Kamargianni, M. (2018). Providing quantified evidence to policy makers for promoting bike-sharing in heavily air-polluted cities: a mode choice model and policy simulation for Taiyuan-China. Submitted to Transportation Research Part A: Policy & Practice.

Li, W. and Kamargianni, M. (2018). A hybrid choice model to investigate the impact of individuals’ satisfaction with the cycling environment on the choice of bike-sharing in China. Submitted to Transportation Research Part F: Psychology and Behaviour.

Journals

Li, W. and Kamargianni, M. (2017). Air pollution and seasonality effects on mode choice in China. Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, 2634, pp.101-109. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3141/2634-15

Kamargianni, M., Li, W., Matyas, M. and Schafer, A. (2016). A critical review of new mobility services for urban transport. Transportation Research Procedia, 14, pp.3294-3303. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2016.05.277

Consultancy projects

Kamargianni, M., Matyas, M., Muscat, J. and Li, W. (2017). Londoners’ attitudes towards car-ownership and Mobility-as-a-Service: impact assessment and opportunities that lie ahead. MaaSLab - UCL Energy Institute Report, Prepared for Transport for London.

Kamargianni, M., Matyas, M., Li, W. and Schafer, A. (2015). Feasibility study for “Mobility as a Service” concept for London. MaaSLab - UCL Energy Institute Report, Prepared for Department for Transport.