Modelling Travel Behaviour of Elderly People using Smart Card Data

Background
The ease of mobility is an important aspect of the quality of life of the elderly people. Yet, there have been very few researches that have focused on analyzing the travel behaviour of the elderly population or attempted to develop detailed mathematical models to predict how their travel patterns may change in response to changes in the transport planning and operational policies. This is primarily attributed to the lack of detailed data.

The availability of the England National Concessionary Travel Scheme data (i.e. smartcard data for the over 65s, blind and disabled) from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) offers the promise to extract timestamped footprints of thousands of elderly public transport users over a long timespan. However, the data has certain limitations. For instance, the available information includes the boarding time of the user, the bus line that has been used and the sub-zone from where he/she has boarded. The origin bus stop can be inferred by combining this data with the travel time records that are collected for performance measurements. Still, the destinations and the true trip origins (beyond the bus stop) are unobserved. Moreover, only a limited number of socio-demographic characteristics of the users are available from WYCA. This warrants the need to investigate methodologies that can address these data issues before using them for developing mathematical models of travel behaviour. Existing data sources like National Travel Survey, British Household Panel, and etc. or small scale supplementary surveys may be fused with the smart card data to account for these data limitations.

Aims and Approach
The proposed project will address the above mentioned research gap by formulating detailed methodologies to account for the limitations of the ENCTS smart card data and developing mathematical modelling frameworks to combine these with more traditional data sources in the context of modelling travel behaviour of the elderly people in West Yorkshire. The proposed approaches are likely to include a combination of statistical data mining and econometric approaches.

Impact of Research
The developed models will be useful for WYCA in demand management and predicting the impact of alternate policies on the mobility of the elderly population. Thus, it can indirectly contribute to improvement of the quality of life of the senior citizens. Moreover, the methodologies used in combining different data sources will be also useful for analyzing travel behaviour of general users once the relevant smart card data which are currently unavailable, but likely to be available in near future.

Training, Partners and Collaborators
West Yorkshire Combined Authority

Entry Requirements/Necessary Background:
The minimum requirement is a UK Upper Second Class Honours or equivalent in a Quantitative Discipline. Desired skills include strong numerical aptitude, some experience in computer programming, interest in transport modelling and Big Data.

Please visit our LARS scholarship page for more information and further opportunities: https://www.environment.leeds.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research-degrees/lars-scholarships/