Happy Birthday Marie Curie!

Marie Skłodowska-Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934)
“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas”

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Welcome to my blog!

Conventionally, travel behaviour theory considers travel as a derived demand. This means that travel occurs just because we want to reach a destination and participate in an activity there. In other words, it is the final goal and the benefits to be got from it, that motivates us to make the trip. But is this always true ? I am pretty sure that the first who would disagree with this theory, which has significantly defined the development path of contemporary cities, would be Constantine P. Cavafy with his most known poem “ Ithaka ”: "As you set out for Ithaka hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery ... Arriving there is what you are destined for. But do not hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you are old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you have gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich ".   In my case, I would probably agree more with Cavafy, than the rigorous theory of the scientific...
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Stay local or go regional? Urban form effects on vehicle use at different spatial scales: A theoretical concept and its application to the San Francisco Bay Area

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Abstract: This paper explores the respective roles of local and regional characteristics of urban form on vehicle travel. We hypothesize that the effects of urban form on vehicle use at the local and regional levels are complementary, and we introduce the concept of local and regional action spaces, which are defined based on the accessibility of alternative means of transport within an acceptable travel time, to test this hypothesis. Multilevel and ordered logit models are developed for the San Francisco Bay Area to estimate the effects of urban form and socioeconomic characteristics on vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) and vehicle trip frequency (for work, shopping, and social/recreational purposes). We find that the two urban scale characteristics exert complementary effects on VKT. However, because people in the San Francisco Bay Area display significantly lower VKT in the local than in the regional action space, we conclude that regional-scale inter-ventions woul...
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Implications of vehicle automation for accessibility and social inclusion of people on low income, people with physical and sensory disabilities, and older people

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Vehicle automation and vehicle sharing are frequently presented as key factors towards a more inclusive transport system.  In our new book chapter, we argue that we should not take this statement for granted. We suggest that the requirements for digital access and online payment for those services, vehicle custom-design, operating complexities, and uncertainties, insecurity and distrust in adoption of new vehicle technologies could compromise possible accessibility gains and thus negatively influence social inclusion levels of people on low income, people with physical and sensory disabilities, and older people.  Book chapter available here .  Many thanks for the nice collaboration to my co-author Bert Van Wee and the editors of the book volume “Demand for Emerging Transportation Systems. Modeling Adoption, Satisfaction and Mobility Patterns” Constantinos Antoniou, Dimitrios Efthymiou, Emmanouil Chaniotakis  Abstract  We analyze the...
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