ITS Monday: Edition 12, 2025

Identifying main drivers for students and staff members’ choice or to work/study from home or attend university campus and their transport mode choice: a case study in Australia

A new academic paper, generated by the iMOVE project Promoting sustainable university travel choices, and co-authored by Camila Balbontin, John Nelson, David Hensher , and Matthew Beck and Edward Wei. The abstract:

Universities are major trip attractors and generators in large cities, and they have a significant influence on the transport network particularly in high-density areas. The trips to and from university campuses are made by staff, students, and visitors, with an important daily rotation of people (e.g., students who leave early, arrive later, etc.). In this study, we aim to improve our understanding of the trips made to the University of Sydney campuses, one of the largest universities in Australia, through investigation of how individuals (namely, staff and students) choose to study/work from home and their modes of transport used to go to campus on different days of the week.

We have collected three sets of data: one in 2022 and two in 2023, using a survey answered by both staff and students. A hybrid logit model including latent variables is estimated to understand the motivations and main drivers to work/study from home and to choose different modes of transport when attending campus. The results indicate that while travel times and costs/fare are important, they are not the primary factors influencing travel behaviour and mode choices.

One key factor was whether staff and students worked or studied from home and campus on the same day, with these individuals more likely to use active transport modes, which is also associated with living closer to campus. Students living farther from campus tend to attend more frequently and primarily use public transport. Social connections and a preference for in-person activities are significant motivations that drive different weekly mobility decisions.

Related iMOVE articles:

• Working from Home: Info, Projects & Resources
• Prospects for Working from Home: Assessing the evidence
• Traffic Congestion: Info, Projects & Resources

Measuring use of the street space in central city areas

It’s a week for quite a few new academic papers in this weeks ITS Monday. This one is co-authored by Chris De Gruyter, Liam Davies, Xiao Li, Afshin Jafari, Alexia Yacoubian, and Marco Amati. The abstract:

In central city areas, the use of different transport modes is common and levels of people activity tend to be high. However, existing measures of street space use mainly focus on vehicle flow, with little consideration given to measuring ‘people’. Based on surveys undertaken within the central city of Melbourne, this research developed six measures of street space use, building upon established measures of flow and concentration by incorporating the amount of space consumed by each transport mode.

Application of the measures shows that estimates of street space use can vary considerably depending on the desired function of the street and how priority is given to different transport modes. The results also highlight the potential redundancy of on-street car parking. The findings can help to better inform the way in which street space is allocated, ultimately maximising choice for people to access central city areas.

Related iMOVE article:

• The battle for space on city roads and footpaths

Related iMOVE projects:

• Speed and safety evaluation of shared spaces in NSW
• Collation of shared spaces infrastructure in NSW
• Optimising multimodal transport networks: Sharing road space

Adelaide roads to get artificial intelligence cameras to improve traffic

“Artificial intelligence cameras will be put on some of the Adelaide’s busiest roads in an Australian-first trial. The new technology aims to not only improve safety but also cut travel times for motorists. The state government is rolling out four smart cameras at some of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.”

The Accessibility Turn: From Practice to Theory and Back Again

A new article from David Levinson‘s The Transportist blog, a delve back into David’s encounters with concepts, theories, and realities of transport accessibility.

Paris to make 500 more streets car-free zones

“Parisians have voted to pedestrianise another 500 of the city’s streets, giving fresh momentum to efforts to curb car usage and improve air quality. Some 65.96 per cent of Parisians voted in favour of the measure, while 34.04 per cent rejected it, official results showed.”

The real danger behind e-Bike tariffs: Cutting corners on battery safety

This article was published on LinkedIn by Zipidi’s Krystyna Weston. “While the headlines scream about price hikes and trade wars, a quieter, far more dangerous story is unfolding in the e-mobility industry — the growing temptation to cut corners on safety.”

Related iMOVE article:

• Liar, liar, e-Bikes on fire

Related iMOVE projects:

• Fire safety for EVs and micromobility: Best practice assessment
• EV batteries: Repair, refurbish, repurpose, recycle
• Second lives for electric vehicle batteries

Data-driven optimization for drone delivery service planning with online demand

Our second-last new academic paper this week, and co-authored by Aditya Paul, Michael W. Levin, S. Travis Waller, and David Rey. The abstract:

In this study, we develop an innovative data-driven optimization approach to solve the drone delivery service planning problem with online demand. Drone-based logistics are expected to improve operations by enhancing flexibility and reducing congestion effects induced by last-mile deliveries. With rising digitalization and urbanization, however, logistics service providers are constantly grappling with the challenge of uncertain real-time demand. This study investigates the problem of planning drone delivery service through an urban air traffic network to fulfill dynamic and stochastic demand.

Customer requests – if accepted – generate profit and are serviced by individual drone flights as per request origins, destinations and time windows. We cast this stochastic optimization problem as a Markov decision process. We present a novel data-driven optimization approach which generates predictive prescriptions of parameters of a surrogate optimization formulation. Our solution method consists of synthesizing training data via lookahead simulations to train a supervised machine learning model for predicting relative link priority based on the state of the network.

This knowledge is then leveraged to selectively create weighted reserve capacity in the network and via a surrogate objective function that controls the trade-off between reserve capacity and profit maximization to maximize the cumulative profit earned. Using numerical experiments based on benchmarking transportation networks, the resulting data-driven optimization policy is shown to outperform a myopic policy. Sensitivity analyses on learning parameters reveal insights into the design of efficient policies for drone delivery service planning with online demand.

Related iMOVE article:

• Drone Transport: Info, Projects, & Resources

Related iMOVE projects:

• Trialling drones for medical use in NT remote communities
• Gap Drone long-range flight test and ground station development
• Prototype Uncrewed Air System delivery aircraft development
• Validating the benefits of increased drone uptake for Australia

Evaluating initiatives to improve transport justice

And a final new academic paper this week, co-authored by Hannah Hook, David Durán-Rodas, Shaila Jamal, and Tim Schwanen. The (partial) abstract:

This special issue seeks to advance knowledge on these critical issues by gathering research that evaluates the effects of interventions aimed at improving environmental and social justice in transportation systems. By focusing on empirical assessments of policies, programs, and practices, this collection aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice, offering insights that can inform both scholarship and policy implementation. Rigorous, transparent, and methodologically diverse research in this area is essential for developing transportation systems that are not only more efficient and sustainable but also fundamentally fair and inclusive.

Related iMOVE articles:

• Equity in Transportation: Info, Projects & Resources