In this model, citizens of a virtual town can choose their mobility mode among 4 options: car, bike, bus, or walk. The urban management of the town defines values of each mode on 6 criteria: ecology, comfort, safety, trip duration, trip cost, and practicality. Citizens have individual constraints (distance to work, and access to bus and car) and personal priorities for the criteria. Citizens can choose between accessible mobility modes either rationally, or by habit, or under the influence of perception biases. The urban management can be modified dynamically to observe the impact on modal choice distribution.
Citizens appear on the map with their mode: green cyclists, yellow pedestrians, red motorists, blue bus passengers. Their distance to the centre reflects their home-work distance; the 3 circles represent walking distance, cycling distance, maximal distance. The 4 sectors reflect their access to car / bus. A “human factors” panel allows to enable or disable habits and/or biases influencing decisions. The “urban planning” panel provides abstract actions of 2 types: on the town infrastructure, by directly changing the value of any mode on any criterion (for instance increase the cost of car, or the safety of bike); and communication, by directly modifying the priority of any criterion in the population. These actions might modify the modal decisions made by the citizens, which can be observed in the map and plots.
This model is part of the ANR SWITCH project.
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