Activity-based Research On Departure Time Choice Of Heterogeneous Travelers

Travel is a derived demand, commuting travel accounts for the vast majority of all travel. For travelers, a day of time allocation mainly divided into the travel time on the way and the duration of the activity itself, travel time is restricted by the departure time, route, travel mode, weather and traffic conditions, etc. Due to the difference of individual socio-economic conditions and preferences, the travel choice behavior of travelers is heterogeneous. In order to accurately describe the heterogeneity of the traveler’s choice behavior, this article from the perspective of activities, by a day’s commuter travel as the research object, using the bottleneck model analysis the departure time choice of two types of heterogeneous travelers under the marginal activity utility as constant or linear function.Research found that: 1) the travel utilities of all travelers interact with each other, the level of wages affect people’s travel time. 2) When the marginal utility is constant, the travel time cost of the traveler is only influenced by his own and whose value of time is higher than his, but is not related to whose value of time lower. 3) Any type of travel crowd, the earliest and latest departures faced the same queue lengths at the bottleneck. 4) When the marginal utility is linear, there is a certain corresponding relationship between the working time flexibility parameters of all kinds of people. 5) In real life, a relatively flexible working time system, whether it is for individuals or companies are likely to be an optimal solution.