Projects

Details of projects from previous years may be found in the ITLS Annual Reports.

Associate Professor Stephen Greaves

Modelling the Environmental Impacts of Commercial Vehicle Tours and Freight Management Policies in Urban Areas [ARC Discovery Project]

The aim of this research is to develop a new methodology to assess the environmental impacts of urban freight transport policies. The major innovations offered by the approach are: the development of an exposure-based module within the environmental evaluation component; an integrated emissions and noise model that is based on the operational characteristics of trucks; and a mathematical modelling approach that incorporates greater behavioural reality into the different tour/stop profiles of trucks. The outcomes of the research will be of importance to freight operators, local councils and road authorities charged with managing freight traffic, and public health authorities.

Using Artificial Neural Networks to Predict Exposure to Fine Particulates in Roadway Environments

Over the last three years, we have conducted a number of trials using GPS technology and portable pollution monitors to assess exposure to pollution at highly disaggregate spatio-temporal levels on various modes of transport in Sydney. The issue under investigation here is the identification and adaptation of appropriate statistical techniques for analysing these data, which by their very nature exhibit a highly complex data structure. Here, we investigate the potential for applying methods based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) to this problem.

Professor David Hensher

Attribute Processing, Heuristics, and Preference Construction in Choice Analysis

It has long been recognized that humans draw from a large pool of processing aids to help manage the everyday challenges of life. It is not uncommon to observe individual´s adopting simplifying strategies when faced with ever increasing amounts of information to process, and especially for decisions where the chosen outcome will have a very marginal impact on their well being. The transactions costs associated with processing all new information often exceed the benefits from such a comprehensive review. The accumulating life experiences of individuals are also often brought to bear as reference points to assist in selectively evaluating information placed in front of them. These features of human processing and cognition are not new to the broad literature on judgment and decision making, where heuristics are offered up as deliberative analytic procedures intentionally designed to simplify choice. What is surprising is the limited recognition of heuristics that individuals use to process the attributes in stated choice experiments. In this research we present a case for a utility-based framework within which some appealing processing strategies are embedded (without the aid of supplementary self-stated intentions), as well as models conditioned on self-stated intentions represented as single items of process advice, and illustrate the implications on willingness to pay for travel time savings of embedding each heuristic in the choice process. Given the controversy surrounding the reliability of self-stated intentions, we introduce a framework in which mixtures of process advice embedded within a belief function might be used in future empirical studies to condition choice, as a way of increasingly judging the strength of the evidence.

Congestion and Variable User Charging as an Effective Travel Demand Management Instrument

Interest at the political level in congestion charging is gaining pace as cities struggle with ways to reduce the effects of growing traffic congestion on the liveability of cities. Despite a long history of promotion of a wide array of travel demand management (TDM) initiatives, very few have had a noticeable impact on the levels of traffic on the road networks of metropolitan areas. TDM success in this context has almost become 'band-aid´ in the absence of a pricing strategy that not one promotes efficient use of the system but also hypothecates revenues to support essential complementary infrastructure and services such as public transport. This research takes a look at the stream of pricing consciousness that is surfacing around the world. Although very few jurisdictions have implemented congestion charging, or any form of efficient variable car and truck user charging, the winds of change are well in place. The adage 'it is not a matter of if but of when' seems to be the prevailing view.

Development of a behavioural system of stated choice models: modelling behavioural, pricing and technological opportunities to reduce automobile energy levels [ARC Discovery Project Grant]

Automobile use is attributed with over 70% of CO2 emissions from the transport sector. This project delivers a new framework to assess the impact of policies to reduce CO2 and other energy sources associated with existing ICE fuel sources and a range of scenarios that involve futures with alternative fuels. The proposed framework will radically change the approach used by practitioners in prediction, and provide a way of capturing behavioural responses of car users to new environmental futures, in which price, performance, distribution and maintenance play a crucial role in adopting environmentally friendly fuels and vehicle designs. Australia lacks this behavioural capability. The focus is on vehicle type choice and use, implementing ideas in discrete-continuous choice modelling, attribute processing, group decision making and prospect theory.

Incompleteness in Bus Contracts: Identifying the Nature of the Ex ante and Ex-post Perceptual Divide

In the transport sector, many types of contracts exist. Some are very precise, and strive for completeness; others are very 'light-weight´ and are incomplete. Bus and coach contracts, won through competitive tendering or negotiation, are typically incomplete in the sense of an inability to verify all the relevant obligations, as articulated through a set of deliverables. This research draws on recent experiences in contract negotiation, and subsequent commitment, to identify what elements of the contracting regime have exposed ambiguity and significant gaps in what the principal expected, and what the agent believed they were obliged to deliver. Using a generalized ordered choice model, in which the order defines agent perceptions of the extent of discrepancy between the principal and the agents 'understanding' of contract obligations, we identify the extent of perceived incompleteness across a sample of bus contracts.

Integrating Accident and Travel Delay Externalities in an Urban Speed Reduction Context [ARC Discovery Project Grant]

The recognition that accident externalities are not independent of travel delays, and hence travel time savings and losses will promote a serious policy rethink about strategies designed to reduce the risk of exposure to accidents. The evidence is designed to identify that additional externality that has to be factored into the accident costs to recognise the other sources of externality typically ignored in accident costing and speed restriction studies. The implication on the development of a national program of road safety is likely to be profound. New surveys using stated choice methods are being developed and data collected to identify the willingness to pay to avoid fatalities and severe injuries.

Professor David Hensher, Dr Stuart Bain and Zheng Li

R-TRESIS: Developing a demand and supply modelling capability for an integrated transport and land use model system for regional New South Wales

This research sets out a demand modelling framework for the development of a regional transport and land use model system (R-TRESIS), to be implemented for New South Wales (Australia). Traditionally, the focus of such a model system has been major metropolitan areas such as Sydney, where we have developed TRESIS (Hensher 2002). Given the growing concern about regional accessibility to many service classes, there is a need for a modelling capability that can be used to prioritise and guide policy decisions in regions that are often described as remote, rural, low density and small town. In developing a framework that is capable of integrating both demand and supply elements of transportation and land use activity, we recognised the challenges in developing primary data sources, and the high likelihood of a reliance on secondary data sources. This suggested an alternative approach to demand modelling that was not dependent on choice models; namely a suite of continuous choice models in which we capture the actual activities undertaken by each mode on both the demand and supply side.

Professor David Hensher, Associate Professor Stephen Greaves and Professor Peter Stopher

Exploring Behavioural Responses of Motorists to Exposure-Based Charging Mechanisms [ARC Linkage Grant, with AAMI]

Our continued reliance on cars is estimated to cost the Australian economy around $50 billion per year in accidents, congestion and air pollution. This project delivers a new approach to reduce these externalities, in which charges are levied on drivers based on their accident history, the kilometres driven and the circumstances under which these kilometres are driven. In addition to the safety and congestion benefits, the outcomes of the project will be of importance to those charged with raising revenue to support infrastructure maintenance and development, and the insurance industry as a basis for reducing risks in driving and making premiums more equitable.

Professor David Hensher and Zheng Li

Assessing sources of variation in travel demand elasticities: A Meta analysis

This project is documenting studies that have established empirical estimates of direct and cross elasticities for public transport service and cost. The aim is to explain differences in the estimates as way of understanding the influence on methods, data paradigms and context in influencing variations in estimates.

How well have Australian toll roads performed - comparing forecasts and actual traffic levels

This research provides key information (e.g., length, toll rates, year opened, operator(s) and payment alternatives) on the fully interoperable toll roads in Australia that are present in Sydney (e.g., the M2, M4, M5, etc), Melbourne (CityLink and EastLink) and Brisbane (the Gateway Bridge, the Logan Motorway and the Gateway Extension). A primary motivation of this paper is to draw together, in one source, information on the nature, extent and performance of Australia´s evolving toll road network which is currently spread across many disparate published and unpublished sources. Where available, we compare and discuss actual traffic levels and forecasts, revealing the sizeable gap or ?error´ in forecasts, especially during the first year of operation. Ordinary regression and panel random effects regression models are developed to identify potential sources of explanation of differences in error forecasts between the Australian toll roads at various points post the opening date. The evidence suggest that the capacity of a toll road, the elapsed time that the toll road has been in place, the specific period of time in which a tolled road is introduced into the network (which influences the complexity of route options including multiple tolled routes and hence toll saturation), the length of the tolled route, the presence of cash payment, and the charging regime (i.e., fixed vs. distance-based or variable user tolls) are key influences on errors in forecasts.

Professor David Hensher and Dr John Rose

Dimensionality of stated choice designs

Stated choice (SC) methods are now a widely accepted data paradigm in the study of behavioural response of agents (be they individuals, households, or other organizations). Their popularity since the pioneering contributions of Louviere and Woodworth (1983) and Louviere and Hensher (1983) has spawned an industry of applications in fields as diverse as transportation, environmental science, health economics and policy, marketing, political science and econometrics. With rare exception, empirical studies have used a single SC design, in which the numbers of attributes, alternatives, choice sets, attribute levels and ranges have been fixed across the entire design. As a consequence the opportunity to investigate the influence of design dimensionality on behavioural response has been denied. Accumulated wisdom has promoted a large number of positions on what design features are specifically challenging for respondents (e.g., the number of choice sets to evaluate); and although a number of studies have assessed the influence of subsets of design dimensions (e.g., varying the range of attribute levels), there exists no single study (that we are aware of) that has systematically varied all of the main dimensions of SC experiments. This research uses a Design of Designs (DoD) SC experiment in which the 'attributes' of the design are the design dimensions themselves including the attributes of each alternative in a choice set. The design dimensions that are varied are the number of choice sets presented, the number of alternatives in each choice set, the number of attributes per alternative, the number of levels of each attribute and the range of attribute levels. We investigate hoe different designs impact on willingness to pay (i.e., attribute valuation), using a sample of respondents in Sydney choosing amongst trip attribute bundles for their commuting trip.

Professor David Hensher and Dr John Rose (with S. Jones)

The role of stated choice analysis is prioritising accounting reporting standards

This research develops of a stated preference experiment conducted on representatives from government trading enterprises, general government entities (such as government departments) and local councils in Australia. The experiment was administered via a CAPI (computer aided personal interview). Using a Bayesian D-error efficient experimental design and a generalized mixed ordered logit model for estimation, the aim is to identify a number of statistically significant influences on infrastructure asset reporting alternatives. These include prevailing government attitudes to the funding of public infrastructure; the physical condition of public infrastructure; the total value or investment of public infrastructure under the agency´s control (as a percentage of total assets); and the amount of annual budget expenditure required to maintain public infrastructure (as a percentage of total own-source expenditure). The findings are designed to test the contention that accounting reports should be supplemented by additional information about the condition of existing infrastructure.

Professor David Hensher and Dr John Rose (with K. Howard, S. Jan, A. Cass, S.J. Chadban and R.D. Allen)

Community preferences for organ donation and allocation in Australia

Improvements in the organ donation rates can be expected to have significant societal benefits with reductions in long term health care costs for recipients as well as improvements in quality of life. Unfortunately, Australia currently is recognised as having one of the lowest organ donation rates in the developed world 9. The chronic shortage of donor organs is recognised as a significant national and international health priority and the appointment of the national Taskforce to address this topic5 is testament to the significance and importance of this issue in Australia. Understanding why Australia has such a low organ donation rate is critical before organ donation rates can be improved. Without detailed research into public perceptions towards and even knowledge of organ donation procedures, strategies and procedures cannot be implemented that will increase donation rates within this country. Whilst a number of studies have examined public attitudes towards organ donations, these have tended to rely solely on multi-item scale questions, which whilst useful, typically provide a snapshot of current attitudes but do not provide useful information as to possible strategies that may bring about changes in public attitudes and perceptions of organ donations. As such, a different methodology capable of not only measuring the public´s attitudes towards organ donations, but also allowing for the testing of different policy procedures is required. In the proposed research, we intend to use SC methods to understand the public preferences for organ donation and, in doing so, assist in driving debate on several potential policy measures that may be implemented by the Australian government.

Professor David Hensher and Professor John Stanley

Road Transport and Climate Change: Stepping off the Greenhouse Gas

Transport is Australia´s third largest and second fastest growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The road transport sector makes up 88 percent of total transport emissions and the projected emissions increase from 1990 to 2020 is 64 percent. Achieving prospective emission reduction targets will pose major challenges for the road transport sector. This research investigates two targets for reducing Australian road transport greenhouse gas emissions, and what they might mean for the sector: emissions in 2020 being 20 percent below 2000 levels; and emissions in 2050 being 80 percent below 2000 levels. Six ways in which emissions might be reduced to achieve these targets are considered. The analysis suggests that major behavioural and technological changes will be required to deliver significant emission reductions, with very substantial reductions in vehicle emission intensity being absolutely vital to making major inroads in road transport GHG emissions.

Professor David Hensher and Professor John Stanley (with J. Stanley and G. Currie)

Social Exclusion and the Value of Mobility

This research investigates factors likely to increase an adult person´s risk of social exclusion, drawing on a detailed household survey in Melbourne, Australia, and uses the findings to impute the value of additional trips. The survey included questions related to personal well-being, travel patterns, household income, social capital and community strength, as well as various indicators of risk of social exclusion. We use a generalised ordered logit (GOL) model that accounts for observed and unobserved heterogeneity through the random parameterisation of thresholds, and derive the marginal effects for each influencing attribute, taking into account the various ways in which each influence contributes to the likelihood of a person being at risk of social exclusion. The major finding is that people are less likely to be at risk of social exclusion if they have regular contact with significant others, have a sense of community, are not poor, are mobile. The research implies that the value of an additional trip in Melbourne is just under $20 for a household at the average income level, implying considerable benefit for mobility enhancing initiatives. Values are higher for people from lower income households, supporting initiatives to reduce exclusion.

 

Professor Corinne Mulley and Dr Rhonda Daniels

Closing the accessibility gap: quantifying the role of flexible transport services

The project, funded by a Faculty Research Grant 2010, has three components: analysing walking distances from home to public transport for current public transport users using Household Travel Survey data; applying knowledge of walking distances to develop a methodology to quantify the accessibility gap in a pilot area; and establishing the potential demand for flexible transport services in the pilot area, following the quantification of the accessibility gap. The project builds on previous research to understand barriers to greater use of flexible transport services in NSW.

The role of public transport interactions in agglomeration economies

The project, funded by  a Faculty Research Grant 2010, aims to understand the role of public transport in supporting cities and agglomeration  economies by investigating informal interactions between workers from different organisations in centres, and how these interactions may be influenced by public transport use. The project investigates the theory that organisations locate in large centres because staff gain productivity benefits from interactions with people outside the organisation, whether formal or informal.

Public transport peak spreading

In many cities, public transport on major corridors is approaching capacity in the peak. The project analysed the challenges of spreading the peak demand for public transport, using a major university campus as illustrative of a large inner city trip generator with high public transport use. The role of the university in generating peak public transport demand and the potential to change the behaviour of students and staff, focusing on timetabling as well as sustainable travel planning initiatives, is examined. The project highlights the difficulties for high public transport trip generators to contribute to peak spreading.

Understanding barriers to implementing flexible transport services in NSW

Flexible Transport Services are services which are flexible in terms of route, vehicle allocation, vehicle operator, type of payment and/or passenger category. Although flexible transport services are used increasingly in Europe and the US as part of the public transport mix in areas where demand is too low to support conventional public transport, there are few sustained examples of these services in Australia. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in NSW including service providers, peak organisations, users, regulators and policy-makers, the research project identified barriers to greater use of flexible transport services in NSW. Five sets of barriers included institutional frameworks such as policy and regulation; economic issues of funding; operational issues such as vehicles; operator and community attitudes and cultures; and information and education about options.

Professor Corinne Mulley and Dr Rhonda Daniels (with C. Schmid)

Accessibility in western Sydney

The project investigates the impact of recent bus network changes in western Sydney on the accessibility experience of bus users in the Fairfield-Liverpool area through surveys of bus users and interviews with stakeholders.

Professor Corinne Mulley and Peter Graham

Cash or Prepay: Investigating motivations for payment of bus fares

The project aims to understand the motivations driving the choice of bus passengers’  payment mechanisms, either cash or prepay tickets, and to understand the impact of simplifying the fare system and improving multimodal prepay tickets. The project involved surveys of frequent bus passengers in northern Sydney before and after the introduction of the MyZone fare reform system in April 2010.

Dr Ada Suk-Fung Ng

Port choice: an ocean liner's perspective

Ongoing Ocean liners and port operators are closely related business partners in sea borne supply chains. An ocean liner calling on a port will increase the connectivity of the port. Together with the efficiency and productivity of the port, more shippers will be attracted to ship their cargos via this liner-port pair. As a result, it increases the profit of both the ocean liner and the port operator. This project aims to study the factors that affect the choice of ports of an ocean liner on its regular shipping routes in order to provide insights for port operators in developing business and marketing strategies.

Dr Ada Suk-Fung Ng (with D. Oron, S.N. Sze and V. Timkovsky)

A two-stage scheduling model for the in-flight catering service

This project studies the in-flight catering scheduling problem. A group of loading teams has to transport food from the kitchen and load it into aircrafts, which land and depart within tight time windows. The number of aircraft that can be served in a trip is restricted by the capacity of the loading truck and a food exposure time limit. Each loading team can only serve a specific set of aircraft types. A two-stage scheduling model is proposed to assign each loading team to aircrafts and decide the shift hour of each team in order to minimize the number of loading team needed.

Dr Ada Suk-Fung Ng and Dr Stuart Bain

Pick-up and delivery service routing with total route time restriction for heterogeneous truck fleet

The transportation and trucking industry remains one of the most important fields in the area of freight logistics. Recent advances in computing speed and power have led to a wide variety of applications being developed in the field of the trucking industry. Due to the increasingly demanding nature of servicing the transportation of goods between different locations, it has become more important for trucking companies to adopt more up-to-date methods of handling operational activities. In this project, we look into a FTL pickup and delivery routing issue where the total route time of each truck is limited such that truck driver will not be away from the depot longer than the time limit, which reduces the turnover rate of long-haul truck driver. Our objective is to effectively assign trucks to customer orders in various locations, to minimize costs due to deadhead travel between the various pickup and delivery locations, and delay in deliveries.

Dr Ada Suk-Fung Ng and Dr Stuart Bain (with J. Leung and X. Cai)

Zoning logistics service area into districts with response time consideration

In police patrolling service, police patrolling teams have to patrol within the servicing area round the clock everyday. Whenever there is incident reported, the team has to reach the crime scene in a reasonably short time. A typical way to achieve this is to zone the area into a certain number of districts. Each district is served by a patrolling team. The objective of this project is to provide an effective zoning method in order to minimize the number of patrolling teams needed, while keeping a high service level by responding to the incident in a reasonably short time.

Dr John Rose

Policy implications based on customer preferences for end of life product recycling: A stated preference application for reverse logistics

The disposal of Electrical Electronic Equipment (EEE) has been gaining prominence in the past decade. The issue has attracted interest due to the hazardous components, such as lead, cadmium, and beryllium, of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) which then interact with the environment when disposed of in conventional waste stream. The number of EEE devices being sold and the speed at which they reach obsolescence is also seen to be increasing. The recycling of domestic waste has become firmly planted in government waste management practices around the world. Improving recycling rates of metal cans, glass, plastic and paper reflect the general uptake of recycling activities in households. Consumers as one of the major forces, besides governmental regulators, who are responsible for the change in electronic waste management practices and environmentally sound developments concerning governmental and companies´ activities in general, are identified in many articles. The proposed study will utilise SC methods analysed using discrete choice models. These methods essentially involve a survey in which sampled respondents are asked to choose from amongst a number of hypothetical alternatives defined on a number of attribute dimensions. By presenting respondents with different choice situations where the attribute levels of the alternatives are changed, researchers are able to identify how these attribute level changes influence choice. In the current study, respondents will undertake a similar choice experiment, with different policy alternatives for recycling of three different products; i) cans/and or bottles, ii) mobile phones and iii) televisions. These three products represent products of different values as well as products with different life cycles. By choosing products with these different characteristics, it is hoped to determine how these influence individual´s preferences for recycling of different goods.

Dr John Rose and Associate Professor Michiel Bliemer

Designing Efficient Data for Stated Choice Experiments: Accounting for socio-demographic and contextual effects in designing stated choice experiments

Identifying methods for reducing the number of respondents required for stated choice (SC) experiments is important for transport studies given increases in survey costs. Such reductions, however, must not come at the cost of a lessening in the reliability of the parameter estimates obtained from models of discrete choice. Recognition of this has resulted in growing interest in a class of SC designs known as efficient designs, which balance reliability concerns with sample size issues. To date, however, the literature on generating efficient designs has only considered experiments that involve only attributes of the experiment. Covariates that may be used in data analysis have therefore ignored to date. In this research, we demonstrate that if covariates are to be used in data analysis, then the efficiency of a SC design may be lessened. We demonstrate how efficient SC experiments may be constructed to account for covariates, and how minimum quotas may be established in order to retain a fixed level of efficiency.

Designing Stated Choice Experiments: State-of-the-Art

Stated choice experiments are often used in transportation studies for estimating and forecasting behaviour of travellers, road authorities, etc. These kinds of experiments rely on underlying experimental designs. This research is designed to analyse and describe in as simple manner as possible, the processes of designing stated choice experiments and is intended to give an overview of the current state-of-the-practice and more importantly the current state-of-the-art. Different design types are examined and described. Orthogonal designs are mainstream under practitioners, but nowadays many researchers realize that so-called efficient designs are able to produce more efficient data in the sense that more reliable parameter estimates can be achieved with an equal or lower sample size. Different types of efficient designs are examined, including possible algorithms for generating efficient designs.

Professor Peter Stopher

Before and after comparison of perceptions of car use after a TravelSmart intervention

ITLS was asked to repeat the Community Perception Survey conducted in Western Adelaide in 2005, prior to the TravelSmart implementation, using as many of the same households as had been used in 2005 as possible. The survey was identical to the previous one, except for the opening screening questions, and the recruitment of additional households to make the sample up to the same size as the original survey. Fieldwork was conducted with about 400 households in November and early December and data have been computerised from the face-to-face surveys. Analysis will be completed in the first three months of 2008. The purpose of the project is to determine whether or not the TravelSmart intervention has changed attitudes about car use and barriers to change from car dependence. The final sample consists of a mix of TravelSmart participants and non-participants.

Developing Tour Based Models for an Integrated Land Use, Transport and Environment Model System for Australia [ARC Discovery Project Grant]

Land use activity and transport provision represent important facets of the Australian economy (e.g., transport activities represent 17% of the total national gross domestic product). This project will improve significantly the ability of policy makers to make better and timely judgments about the virtues of specific land use and transport planning outcomes. The behavioural models to be developed will allow for greater sensitivity analysis to policy scenario planning, with measured impacts including forecasts of traffic levels and environmental impacts, especially greenhouse gas emissions and energy requirements. Our work to date has concentrated on literature review and exploring the potential definitions of a tour. Work is also proceeding on reanalysing the wealth of GPS data we have accumulated to represent tours rather than trips.

Long-Range Monitoring of Travel Behaviour Change Programs for the NTBCP [Queensland Transport]

Following on from the successful completion of the Pilot Testing of alternative methods for conducting a long-range monitoring program for voluntary travel behaviour change projects, the National Travel Behaviour Change Project partners, through Queensland Transport selected ITLS to conduct long-range monitoring for the period from late 2007 until late 2012, with a final report to be submitted in March 2013. The project involves a panel of approximately 115 households, drawn from the ACT, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria who will complete a 15-day GPS survey once a year from 2007 through 2012. The initial wave of the panel was completed in November-December of 2007, and subsequent waves of the panel will be completed in the period of October-November. A report is to be provided to the NTBCP partners prior to March 1 each year from 2009, documenting the changes in greenhouse gas emissions that are estimated from this survey.

Ohio GPS Household Travel Survey [Ohio Department of Transportation, Ohio, USA]

ITLS was selected as part of a team to conduct the first GPS-only household travel survey to be conducted anywhere in the world. The survey will involve 4,000 households recruited to carry GPS devices for 3 days, with the sample selected to cover the entire calendar year of 2009. A sub sample of 1,500 households will be asked to complete a prompted recall survey, in which respondents will be asked to provide additional details about each trip recorded by GPS for one of the three days. Each member of each sampled household over the age of 12 will be asked to carry a GPS device. The principal task that will be undertaken by ITLS is to develop enhanced software for deducing trips, with mode, purpose, and other attributes required for travel demand modelling. In addition, ITLS will design the prompted recall survey and all survey materials to be distributed with the GPS devices, and will process all GPS data. It is expected that the software enhancements will involve the addition of artificial intelligence software to the existing heuristic software that ITLS has developed over the past 5 to 6 years, thereby improving the accuracy of the deduced data, eliminating the need for manual checking, and providing additional data such as occupancy and cost information.

Pilot Validation of the Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity (VISTA, 2007)

PlanTrans Pty Ltd was selected by VicRoads to undertake a pilot validation of the new Victoria Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity (VISTA) of 2007-8. PlanTrans Pty Ltd subcontracted with ITLS to provide the GPS devices and to analyse the data collected from the GPS units. The survey was conducted by recruiting households by door-knocking in selected suburbs of Melbourne and, after recruiting the household to do the VISTA survey, then attempting to recruit the household to also do a one-week GPS survey covering the same time as the VISTA survey. A sample of 80 households undertaking the GPS survey was desired, with the expectation that this would result in 50 households actually completing both the VISTA and GPS surveys as requested. Final analysis of the results is still being conducted.

Evaluation of comparative effectiveness of TravelSmart tools [South Australia Department of Transport, Energy, and Infrastructure]

ITLS was asked to undertake a study to determine which tools used in the TravelSmart implementation in the western suburbs of Adelaide were most effective in producing travel behaviour change. The project will take place in two stages. In the first stage, a data file from SA DTEI will be merged with data from the odometer and GPS panels to show which tools were taken by each participating household. ITLS will then determine if it is possible to determine differences in the changes made by households as a result of TravelSmart that can be attributed to the tools provided. In the second stage, a survey will be undertaken of households that participated in TravelSmart to ask them which tools they received and which they found more useful in helping them to change their travel behaviour. The result of the study is expected to provide improved information about which tools are most effective in assisting households to change travel behaviour.

Professor Peter Stopher, Associate Stephen Greaves, Andrew Collins and Jun Zhang (with N. Swann and C. FitzGerald)

Transport Evaluation of Households in the western suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia

ITLS has been selected to undertake a 3-year evaluation of the effects of a variety of transport policy and investment actions by the government of South Australia in a significant portion of Adelaide´s western suburbs. This is the first 3-year evaluation of its type to be undertaken in Australia. To implement the evaluation, ITLS established two panels in three Local Government Areas one to provide odometer readings of all household vehicles every four months, beginning in April 2005, and ending in August 2007; and the other to use personal GPS recording devices for one week each year, in the months of August-September of each of 2005, 2006, and 2007. Based on analysis of the measurement of these two panels, ITLS will be able to determine the extent to which households change their travel behaviour and also whether such changes are sustained in the short term. Of particular interest will be the effects of the project on the amount of travel and the modes of travel used by panel members over the three-year period. This project marks the first time in which a panel odometer survey and a GPS panel will be used to evaluate transport initiatives. Following the successful completion of pilot studies, ITLS is conducting continuing surveys using both panel odometer surveys of 1000 households and a GPS panel survey of 200 households with an annual survey period of 7 days travel in each wave. The current monitoring of household travel is expected to continue to late 2007.

Professor David Walters

Emerging business models: the impact on logistics

The expanding interest by the recently industrialised economies has led to their increasing competition in high labour content manufacturing. This development resulted in many Australian manufacturing companies becoming uncompetitive and looking to restructure their business models. This project considers the impact that a shift from high volume-low value business models towards high value-low volume models is having on business model design and logistics management.

Is the traditional supply chain adequate to the changes of the twenty first century?

It is arguable that the conventional supply chain is becoming limited in its ability to identify optional and innovative responses. Recent research suggests understanding the nature of demand through demand chain analysis for example; the trade-off factors between product-service characteristics may result in on an emphasis on non-price value differentiation and greater margins. Demand chain analysis has explored and has ascertained, for example, the role of brands, innovation, and service response and identified the sensitivities of customer response to these and other product-service features. Using demand chain to identify the customer expectations or, product/service profile(s) of markets and their segments results in an effective and efficient Response Management approach to both customer and supplier relationship management and a closer alignment with the value chain concept.