Joint Discrete-Continuous Model of Travel Mode and Departure Time Choices

This paper presents a cluster-based joint modeling approach to investigating heterogeneous travelers’ behavior toward trip mode and departure time choices by considering those choices as a joint decision. First, a two-step clustering algorithm was applied to classify travelers into six distinct clusters to account for the heterogeneity in their decision-making behavior. Then, a joint discrete-continuous model was proposed for each cluster, in which the travel mode and departure time were estimated by a multinomial logit and a log-linear regression model, respectively. These two models were jointly estimated with a copula approach. For an investigation of the performance of the proposed approach, its results were compared with an aggregate joint model on all nonclustered observations to assess the potential benefits of population clustering. The goodness-of-fit measures and prediction accuracy results demonstrated that the proposed cluster-based joint model significantly outperformed the aggregate joint model. Further, the variations in the estimated parameters of different clusters indicated significant behavioral differences across clusters. Hence, the proposed cluster-based joint model, while offering higher accuracy, possesses a significant potential for transportation policy making because it has the capability to target different types of travelers on the basis of their decision-making behavior.