(PI: Chandra Bhat)

In the urban travel demand literature, departure time choice has received relatively little attention compared to the other choice dimensions characterizing trips. Most local, state and federal transportation agencies apply simplistic, aggregate-level, factors to apportion total daily travel demand among each of several time periods. However, ignoring the time-of-day dimension of travel and applying factors that remain unchanged in the modeling process is inadequate for several reasons. The emphasis in the project is on non-work trips since such trips offer a more interesting challenge than work trips in the context of departure time decisions.

Keywords: Departure time choice, non-work trip modeling, urban travel demand modeling