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Transportation Seminar Series
When is Getting There Half the Fun? – Understanding the Positive Utility of TravelNov 14, 2007 (1:30 - 2:30 p.m., IACC 422) Drawing from a variety of sources, Dr. Mokhtarian challenges the truism that the demand for travel is (solely) derived from the demand for spatially-separated activities. She will discuss the tripartite nature of the utility for travel: the utility of reaching the destination (the conventionally-ascribed motivation for traveling), the utility of activities that can be conducted while traveling, and the utility of travel itself. She will review the reasons why travel can be desired for its own sake, and suggest that they apply not just to vacation travel, but in varying degrees to our daily urban travel. Professor Mokhtarian explores the empirical evidence for such a positive utility, drawing on her own and others' work involving direct questioning, values of travel time savings obtained from utility-theoretic inverse demand systems, random coefficients of travel time in mode choice models, and route choices other than the minimum path. She will present some suggestions for modifying standard travel/activity diaries, so that we can begin to collect the baseline data needed to establish the extent to which a positive utility of travel translates to "excess travel." She will conclude by discussing some implications for transportation modeling and planning. Patricia L. Mokhtarian, University of California – Davis  Patricia L. Mokhtarian is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Associate Director for Education of the Institute of Transportation Studies, and Chair of the interdisciplinary graduate program in Transportation Technology and Policy at the University of California, Davis. She joined UC Davis in 1990, after nine years in regional planning and consulting in Southern California. Dr. Mokhtarian has specialized in the study of travel behavior for 30 years. A key research interest has been the impact of telecommunications technology on travel behavior, with additional interests in congestion-response behavior, attitudes toward mobility, adoption of new transportation technologies, land use and transportation interactions and the transportation/air quality impacts of transportation demand management measures. She has authored or co-authored more than 160 refereed journal articles, technical reports, and other publications. Dr. Mokhtarian is active with the Transportation Research Board, including serving as the founding chair (now emeritus member) of the standing Telecommunications and Travel Behavior Committee, as well as on several other standing committees and study panels. She is on the editorial boards of the Transportation Research Part A and Transportation journals. Her PhD is in Operations Research, from Northwestern University.
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