| This thesis presents in investigation into several inter-related travel decisions made by families with children, a topic which has been generally overlooked by major travel demand models. The primary goal of this investigation was to develop an empirical understanding of these decisions which would allow the behaviour of families with children to be accurately represented in an activity scheduling model. The first of these decisions is the joint choice of whether a family will use a out-of-home childcare service, and the location of that service, and the thesis proposes an econometric model for this nested choice. A novel method for generating the daycare location choice set using a stochastic frontier model is proposed and tested. Finally, the effect of needing to drop off a child at daycare or school in the morning on an adult's choice of travel mode and departure time is analyzed. |
