Travel Behaviour Modelling Workshop: Finding Connections

Understanding, modelling and influencing travel behaviour

Are you interested in applying your interest in behavioural research to the important challenge of understanding, modelling and influencing human decision-making with respect to the everyday decisions we make to travel from our homes to the places we work, study, shop, access services, recreate, etc.? When, how and why do we go where we do?

Mobility Network invites researchers in any discipline – the social sciences, data and computing sciences, engineering, humanities, and anyone else – interested in understanding, modelling and influencing human decision-making – for good – to bring their knowledge and insight to a workshop where we hope to lay the foundation for a new travel behaviour research community at U of T.

Professor Eric Miller, director of Mobility Network, will lead this workshop.

The travel choices we make are the outcome of a complicated decision-making process that is influenced by our individuality, our attitudes and perceptions, our social environment, our physical and built environment, the transportation technologies and services available for our use, and other factors. Our choices may or may not be rational – or sustainable.

Collectively, our choices result in the demand for travel. This demand for travel is addressed by a combination of public and private transportation infrastructure and services – roads, parking, transit, sidewalks, bike lanes, rail lines, airports, etc. It’s a game of chicken and egg – people can only travel via the modes available to them, but the supply of these services often imperfectly meets our needs, especially with respect to equity and sustainability goals.

For more information, please read this Backgrounder on travel demand.