Tour-Based Time-of-Day Choices for Weekend Nonwork Activities

Research on time-of-day (TOD) choices has predominantly focused on weekday trips or activities, with few studies covering the behavior of TOD choices on weekends. This paper examines TOD choices on weekends using a tour-based approach. A multinomial discrete choice model was calibrated to explore the effects that household and individual socio-demographics have on TOD choice behavior. In light of unique travel patterns on weekends, the authors have combined both Saturday and Sunday into a single travel period, which is then divided into six TOD segments. The methodology is based on the observation that, unlike on weekdays, what individuals do on Saturdays is less likely to be repeated on Sundays with the same TOD pattern. This manuscript demonstrates the application of a tour-based TOD weekend forecast model using the 2001 Atlanta Household Survey data from Georgia. The survey contains detailed travel information on weekends. The study presents the exploratory analysis of weekend travel patterns at both trip-based and tour-based levels in Atlanta. A brief comparison of trip-based and tour-based models is also given. The study validates the suggestion that a tour-based model improves the overall goodness-of-fit of the model and produces a better forecast.