An Activity-Based Approach to Accessibility

In an effort to compensate for the deficiencies on traditional trip based approach, this dissertation focuses on the supplement in traditional measures of individual accessibility, and the incorporation of temporal transference effects and ride sharing behavior within a household to form a sensitive index. A network-based activity assignment protocol has been developed for complex travel activity decisions within a household. The proposed research incorporates routing, scheduling, and ride-sharing components into a hybrid model that explicitly captures the interactions between household members and integrates ride-sharing, and time window constraints. Under this approach, individual accessibility can be estimated and aggregated to reflect household accessibility. Prior research on such accessibility approaches strongly suggests that the proposed extensions can be employed to estimate the impacts of changes in different policy options. Results of this research will contribute to the state-of-the-art in complex travel behavior and validate a policy-sensitive forecasting model.