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Applying machine learning approaches to model travel choice between micro-mobility services

Ren, Qilin LU (2021) In Student thesis series INES NGEM01 20211
Dept of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science
Abstract
Shared micro-mobility gradually becomes a crucial part of human daily transportation. To develop the shared micro-mobility, discovering the important influence factors of each travel mode is a key aspect. However, there are scarce studies that adopt machine learning methods to model travel choice between shared micro-mobility services and identify the crucial determinants for each mode. This study aims to apply four different machine learning methods (random forest, support vector machine, artificial neural network, and logistic regression) to simulate the decision schema in time and space and examine the factors that significantly influence citizens’ travel mode choice in Zurich, Switzerland.
Collected data are used to build the choice... (More)
Shared micro-mobility gradually becomes a crucial part of human daily transportation. To develop the shared micro-mobility, discovering the important influence factors of each travel mode is a key aspect. However, there are scarce studies that adopt machine learning methods to model travel choice between shared micro-mobility services and identify the crucial determinants for each mode. This study aims to apply four different machine learning methods (random forest, support vector machine, artificial neural network, and logistic regression) to simulate the decision schema in time and space and examine the factors that significantly influence citizens’ travel mode choice in Zurich, Switzerland.
Collected data are used to build the choice set, which mainly includes trip attributes and external environment factors. Then, the four Machine Learning methods are used to examine the importance of each influence factor by permutation importance, and the performances of four ML models are compared. How the top 6 influence factors with higher importance affect the human choice of shared micro-mobility service is analyzed as follows.
The Random Forest model showed the best-predicted performance. With respect to the feature importance in the RF model, trip attributes, such as the duration and the length of the trip, are identified as the most important influence factor, followed by some POI type and density around the destination, like public facility, and education services. By contrast, weather affects people’s choices slightly. It is noteworthy to see that dockless facilities always have priority when there is the same type of docked facilities without considering other variables, but docked services are still preferable under some situations. The results are valuable to policymakers and shared services provided by companies to adjust the shared micro-mobility system and contribute to better sustainable transportation. (Less)
Popular Abstract
Shared micro-mobility gradually becomes a crucial part of human daily transportation, which mainly includes docked bikes, docked bike, dockless e-bike, escooter, and so on. Many objective factors may affect people’s choices when they are planning a trip by shared micro-mobility services. To develop the shared micro-mobility, improve the utility of shared micro-mobility services, and build a better layout of the area providing the services, discovering the important influence factors of each travel mode is a key aspect.
This study aimed to use four popular machine learning methods (random forest, support vector machine, artificial neural network, and logistic regression) to simulate how the external factors influence human choices,... (More)
Shared micro-mobility gradually becomes a crucial part of human daily transportation, which mainly includes docked bikes, docked bike, dockless e-bike, escooter, and so on. Many objective factors may affect people’s choices when they are planning a trip by shared micro-mobility services. To develop the shared micro-mobility, improve the utility of shared micro-mobility services, and build a better layout of the area providing the services, discovering the important influence factors of each travel mode is a key aspect.
This study aimed to use four popular machine learning methods (random forest, support vector machine, artificial neural network, and logistic regression) to simulate how the external factors influence human choices, identifying the important influence factors and analyze the relationship between different choices and these factors.
Concerning the feature importance in the method with the best performance, trip attributes, such as the duration and the length of the trip, are identified as the most important influence factor, followed by some POI (Point of interest) type and density around the destination, like public facility, and education services. By contrast, weather conditions affect people’s choices slightly. In addition, it is noteworthy to see that dockless facilities always have priority when there is the same type of docked facilities without considering other variables, but docked services are still preferable under some situations. The results are valuable to policymakers and shared services provided by companies to adjust the shared micro-mobility system and contribute to better sustainable transportation. (Less)
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author
Ren, Qilin LU
supervisor
organization
course
NGEM01 20211
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
Geography, Shared micro-mobility, machine learning, travel mode choices, transportation, Geomatics
publication/series
Student thesis series INES
report number
553
language
English
id
9065547
date added to LUP
2021-09-22 14:51:37
date last changed
2021-09-22 14:51:37
@misc{9065547,
  abstract     = {{Shared micro-mobility gradually becomes a crucial part of human daily transportation. To develop the shared micro-mobility, discovering the important influence factors of each travel mode is a key aspect. However, there are scarce studies that adopt machine learning methods to model travel choice between shared micro-mobility services and identify the crucial determinants for each mode. This study aims to apply four different machine learning methods (random forest, support vector machine, artificial neural network, and logistic regression) to simulate the decision schema in time and space and examine the factors that significantly influence citizens’ travel mode choice in Zurich, Switzerland.
Collected data are used to build the choice set, which mainly includes trip attributes and external environment factors. Then, the four Machine Learning methods are used to examine the importance of each influence factor by permutation importance, and the performances of four ML models are compared. How the top 6 influence factors with higher importance affect the human choice of shared micro-mobility service is analyzed as follows.
The Random Forest model showed the best-predicted performance. With respect to the feature importance in the RF model, trip attributes, such as the duration and the length of the trip, are identified as the most important influence factor, followed by some POI type and density around the destination, like public facility, and education services. By contrast, weather affects people’s choices slightly. It is noteworthy to see that dockless facilities always have priority when there is the same type of docked facilities without considering other variables, but docked services are still preferable under some situations. The results are valuable to policymakers and shared services provided by companies to adjust the shared micro-mobility system and contribute to better sustainable transportation.}},
  author       = {{Ren, Qilin}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  series       = {{Student thesis series INES}},
  title        = {{Applying machine learning approaches to model travel choice between micro-mobility services}},
  year         = {{2021}},
}