Personal travel assistant providing trips optimized by cost, time, user preference, calories, and carbon use changed the travel behaviors of 13 percent of users.

The Trip Itinerary Optimization platform was developed to optimize trip itineraries in accordance with realistic daily constraints and unique circumstances of individual travelers.

Date Posted
12/12/2017
Identifier
2017-B01214
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The Trip Itinerary Optimization Platform: A Framework for Personalized Travel Information

Summary Information

This study explores how automated personal travel assistants can be used to understand what motivates current travel behaviors, as well as what efficiency gains are feasible through alternative mode choice. The Trip Itinerary Optimization (TrIO) platform was developed to optimize trip itineraries in accordance with realistic daily constraints and unique values of individual travelers. More than 270 participants from across the United States used this three-stage web tool. In the context of shared mobility services and other emerging technical innovations, personal mobility applications like the one proposed in this report will play increasingly important role for those living in urban environments.



Methodology



The online mobility recommendation process consisted of three stages. Users first provide origin-destination pairs, calendar events and travel constraints (the need to transport passengers or children, baggage, etc.) through an online travel diary interface. Additionally, a preference elicitation survey is given to measure prioritization of optimal time, cost, calories, and carbon emission outcomes when making travel decisions. The travel itinerary informs a recommendation engine that schedules requests to location-based web services for information including traffic conditions, estimated drive times between origin-destination pairs, and the cost and availability of public transit options and shared mobility services. Later, after feasible travel itineraries have been compiled from these web-based information services, platform users are provided access to a personalized online dashboard displaying sets of daily trip itineraries, each optimized for either time, cost, calories, carbon emissions or user preference. A week later, users were invited to respond to a final survey about their actual travel behaviors. At all stages, users responded to survey questions designed to quantify travel attitudes and behaviors.

Findings

A preliminary usability study of the TrIO platform showed that, in general, users found the system valuable for informing their travel decisions; 13 percent of platform users reported subsequent changes to their travel behavior.

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