UC Irvine Institute of Transportation Studies

In this paper, activity pattern analysis is employed to quantitatively assess the potential impact of (1) the introduction and use of a special purpose urban vehicle, and (2) gasoline rationing on the daily activities of individuals. The results obtained are based on a study both of the actual activity patterns of 664 individuals from Orange County, California as well as of simulated responses to the energy-constrained environment. Two of the most easily implemented user-related options: (1) triipchaining (the formation of multiple-sojourn tours) and (2) activity site substitution were analyzed in detail under varying degrees of constraint severity imposed by the two scenarios. The results obtained from this study indicate that those segments of the population that are characterized by long distance trips to activities of a highly inflexible nature (i.e., work or school) and large numbers of medium distance trips will experience severe difficulty in carrying out their current activity patterns when energy-constraint policies are introduced. With respect to potential remedies for transportation policy induced restrictions on daily activity patterns, it is shown that most of the strategies evaluated offer some relief to the latter population group but little, if any, to the former.