Advancing Methods for Understanding Multimodal Intercity Transportation Characteristics

近年来，由于城际高速公路和机场的旅行延误增加，基础设施投资需求增加，以及社会态度和对交通服务特性，延误和环境影响的容忍度不断变化，北美的城际交通受到了更多的关注。运输机构面临着数十亿美元的城际运输服务的重大投资决策;然而，我们对城际旅行基本特征的理解与其对社会的整体影响的重要性并不匹配。本研究有三个主要目的：1）提高我们对城际多式联运的理解，特别是城际出行需求和城际出行服务特征之间的关键演变关系; 2）展示我们如何利用新的数据源来构建更全面、综合和有意义的城际出行趋势来源，以更好地理解这些动态关系; 3）改进用于比较关键城际交通投资和政策决策的系统分析方法，特别是在我们如何处理不确定性方面。以下任务将有助于实现这些目标。通过移动电话探测器等新来源提供的数据将与更传统的数据来源相结合，以跟踪旅行需求与服务特点之间的关系，因为它们随着时间的推移而演变。此外，该研究计划将开发一种新的方法来评估不同的城际交通服务政策方案的比较，在一系列的不确定性水平的服务特性和需求之间的关系。这种方法提供了一种系统的方法来评估不同情景之间的相对表现，即使我们对影响城际旅行的潜在机制高度不确定。总的来说，这项拟议的研究将提供关键的见解，将改善多式联运城际交通规划活动。这些决定对公众有着重大影响，为城际交通规划提供更好的信息的重要性怎么强调都不过分。

Intercity transportation in North America has received more attention in recent years due to increasing travel delays on intercity highways and at airports, high infrastructure investment needs, as well as changing social attitudes and tolerances surrounding transportation service characteristics, delays, and environmental impacts. Transportation agencies face major investment decisions with respect to intercity transportation services in the order of billions of dollars; however, our understanding of basic intercity travel characteristics does not match its importance in terms of overall impact to society. This research has three major objectives: 1) to improve our understanding of multimodal intercity transportation, particularly key evolving relationships between intercity travel demand and intercity travel service characteristics; 2) to demonstrate how we can utilize new data sources to build more comprehensive, integrated, and meaningful sources of intercity travel trends to better understand these dynamic relationships; and 3) to improve the systems analysis methods used to compare critical intercity transportation investment and policy decisions, particularly with respect to how we handle uncertainty. The following tasks will serve to meet these objectives. Data made available through new sources such as cellular phone probes will be combined with more traditional sources of data, to track relationships between travel demand and service characteristics as they evolve over time. Also, this research program will develop a new approach for evaluating how different intercity transportation service policy scenarios compare, over a range of uncertainty levels regarding the relationships between service characteristics and demand. This approach provides a systematic method to assess how different scenarios perform relative to one another, even when we are highly uncertain about the underlying mechanisms that affect intercity travel. Overall, this proposed research will provide critical insights that will improve multimodal intercity transportation planning activities. These decisions have a significant impact on the public, and the importance of providing better information for intercity transportation planning cannot be overstressed.