Temporal Stability of Generation Choice Models

This paper evaluates the temporal stability of generation choice models by considering two cases. The first case evaluates temporal stability with widely used explanatory variables, and the second examines whether temporal stability improves with the inclusion of life cycle, area type, and accessibility. The results of this research show that generation choice models, with their ability to estimate person trips and accommodate more variables that define the traveler and the trip, are temporally stable for home-based work trips by workers and home-based other trips by nonworking adults. Home-based other trips by workers show mixed results with respect to temporal stability, while home-based other trips by children do not pass the test of temporal stability with any of the measures considered. This research shows that, while life cycle, area type, and accessibility variables help explain travel behavior, they provide little, if any, additional benefit with respect to temporal stability.