Modelling of travel behaviour of students using artificial intelligence

Abstract

Travel demand models are required by transportation planners to predict the travel behaviour of people with different socio-economic characteristics. Travel behaviour of students act as an essential component of travel demand modelling. This behaviour is reflected in the educational activity travel pattern, the timing, sequence and mode of travel of students. Roads in the vicinity of schools are adversely affected during the school opening and closing hours. It enhances the traffic congestion, emission and safety problems around schools. It is necessary to improve the safety of school going children by understanding the present travel behaviour and to develop efficient sustainable traffic management measures to reduce congestion in the vicinity of schools. It is possible only if the travel behaviour of educational activities are studied. This travel behaviour is complex in nature and lot of uncertainty exists. Selection of modelling technique is very important for modelling the complex travel behaviour of students. This leads to the importance of application of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in this area. AI techniques are highly developed in twenty first century due to the advancements in computer, big data and theoretical understanding. It is proved in the literature that these techniques are suitable for modelling the human behaviour. However, it has not been used in behaviourally oriented activity based modelling. This study is aimed to develop a model system to predict the daily travel behaviour of students using artificial intelligence technique, ANN. These ANN models were then compared with the conventional econometric models developed. It was observed that artificial intelligence models provide better results than econometric models in predicting the activity-travel behaviour of students. These models were further applied to study the variation in activity-travel behaviour, if short term travel-demand management measures like promoting walking for educational activities are implemented. Thus the study established that artificial intelligence can replace the conventional econometric methods for modelling the activity-travel behaviour of students. It can also be used for analysing the impact of short term travel demand management measures.