Travel Behavior Characteristics With Analysis For The Elderly

Travel behavior theory is one of the important basic theories in the field of traffic management and control.Travel behavior research,a significant issue for urban sociology,is also a basic work for the urban traffic programming,construction and management.Urban traffic structure is often affected by such factors as the age structure of urban citizen and the development of urban society.As revealed in the "Report on Estimation of Population Aging Development" from China National Committee on Ageing,China will enter a rapid aging stage from 2001 to 2020 and hold the growth rate as 5 million elders per year.Another report,issued by China National Committee on Ageing in February,2006,points out that the elderly accounts for 13.66% of the total population in Beijing,and the aging will reach the level as 31%or so in 2050.The rapid aging process will inevitably induce a great change of traffic structure in Beijing.While,the research on travel characteristics of the elderly provides essential support to traffic programming,and the existing and probable influences of social development on the elders' travel behaviors can be obtained by analyzing the relationship between the elders' travel behaviors and the socio-economic attribute related.Therefore,to meet the elders' travel demand,it is rather important to advance proper traffic management measures by summarizing the rules and characteristics of the elders' travel behaviors with advanced approaches.Focusing on the travel behavior characteristics of the elderly,the core work of the current study is summarized as below:1.Based on the review of domestic and international research status,the study sums up the relative merits of the commonly-used approaches and points out the disadvantages of some existing researches.Aiming at behavior explanation and estimation,several basic theories like the consumer behavior theory,the H(a|¨)gerstrand theory of time-space constrains,and the random utility theory are used to investigate the travel behavior characteristics of the elderly,which is helpful for outlining relevant policy at the behavior-controlling level.2.The detailed travel behavior characteristics analysis of the elderly is conducted using relevant statistical method.Movement-based approach is utilized to quantitatively analyze the influences of elders' socio-economic attributes to their travel behaviors, which finds a novel way to explore the travel behavior characteristics of the elderly,and becomes the base for explaining and estimating the travel behavior characteristics of the elderly.3.Shopping is one of the major travel purpose of the elderly,and whether this kind of travel can be well completed always affects the quality of the elder's life.With domestic and international method related,the study deeply analyzes the shopping travel characteristics of the elderly and concludes the spatial-temporal features by the H(a|¨)gerstrand theory of time-space constrains.The results are helpful for improving the shopping condition in elders' community,and provide references for the aging-oriented shopping cycle strategy in Beijing. 4.The influence of aging on Beijing residents' travel structure is mainly caused by its influence on urban population structure.In light of the national estimation of future population structure,the study explores the Beijing residents' spatial-temporal travel characteristics under different aging proportion by regression analysis,and presents the influence of aging on residents' travel structure,which is beneficial for traffic policy application.5.Taking such factors as the gender,age,with or without spouses as influencing factors,the estimation model is developed by multinomial Logit model,and the significance and sensitivity of all the parameters are examined.A double-level nested Logit model is formulated based on home-based trip-chain and travel mode choice analysis.The study also presents the meaning of the partial regression coefficient through odds ratio.It verifies the model's statistical characteristics and the precision from four aspects:significance test,likelihood ratio test,goodness ratio,and hit rate. The results indicate that the multinomial Logit model could get expected solution with high accuracy.6.The departure time choice model and travel times distribution model are developed base on the Cox proportional hazard model.Taking the travel purpose as the Hierarchical control variable,the elders' departure time distribution graph is produced to illustrate the influence of travel purpose on departure time choice.From the integrity, continuity,precision,significance,and parameter estimation,the Cox proportional hazard model is proved to be effective in departure time estimation for the elderly.