Title Participants Abstract "Examining competition among airline regarding route portfolios at domestic hubs under government regulation : the case of China's aviation market" "Yue Hu, Liang Dai, Kurt Fuellhart, Frank Witlox" "Numerous studies have explored airline competition on routes, with a limited focus on competition in route portfolios at hub airports. Route control regulations influence this competition. This study proposes a theoretical framework for examining airline competition in route portfolios at regulated hub airports, using the Chinese market as a case. The Chinese market, characterized by strict government regulations, has seen substantial passenger traffic growth. Considering the historical airline network structure as a key evaluation criterion in China’s regulations, we examine the impact of airline network structures on this competition. Findings reveal distinct airline network types: Mature, Hub-led, Direct-flight-led, Direct-flight-expansion, Hub-cultivation, and Initial. Mature and Hub-cultivation networks are associated with establishing numerous routes at airports with fewer competitor hubs. However, Mature airlines also dominate airports with significant competitor hubs. Hub-led, Direct-flight-led, and Direct-flight-expansion networks tend to establish many routes at airports with substantial competitor hubs, while Initial networks do not exhibit such competition. Aviation policy and company decisions significantly influence airline competitive positions at hub airports." "A comparative analysis of determinants, characteristics, and experiences of four daily trip types" "Hannah Hook, Jonas De Vos, Veronique Van Acker" "When driving becomes risky : micro-scale variants of the lane-changing maneuver in highway traffic" "Amna Qayyum, Bernard De Baets, Samuel Van Ackere, Frank Witlox, Guy De Tré, Nico Van de Weghe" "Objective: Vehicular lane-changing is one of the riskiest driving maneuvers. Since vehicular automation is quickly becoming a reality, it is crucial to be able to identify when such a maneuver can turn into a risky situation. Recently, it has been shown that a qualitative approach: the Point Descriptor Precedence (PDP) representation, is able to do so. Therefore, this study aims to investigate whether the PDP representation can detect hazardous micro movements during lane-changing maneuvers in a situation of structural congestion in the morning and/or evening.Method: The approach involves analyzing a large real-world traffic dataset using the PDP representation and adding safety distance points to distinguish subtle movement patterns.Results: Based on these subtleties, we label four out of seven and five out of nine lane-change maneuvers as risky during the selected peak and the off-peak traffic hours respectively.Conclusions: The results show that the approach can identify risky movement patterns in traffic. The PDP representation can be used to check whether certain adjustments (e.g., changing the maximum speed) have a significant impact on the number of dangerous behaviors, which is important for improving road safety. This approach has practical applications in penalizing traffic violations, improving traffic flow, and providing valuable information for policymakers and transport experts. It can also be used to train autonomous vehicles in risky driving situations." "Application of the Point-Descriptor-Precedence representation for micro-scale traffic analysis at a non-signalized T-junction" "Amna Qayyum, Bernard De Baets, Laure De Cock, Frank Witlox, Guy De Tré, Nico Van de Weghe" "An intersection of two or more roads poses a risk for potential conflicts among vehicles. Often the reasons triggering such conflicts are not clear, as they might be too subtle for the human eye. The environment also plays a part in understanding where, when, and why a particular vehicle interaction has occurred in a certain way. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to dive deeper into the vehicle interaction at a micro-scale within the embedded geographical environment, particularly at the intersections. This would in turn assist in evaluating the association of vehicle interactions with conflict risks and near-miss accidents. Moreover, detection of such micro traffic interactions could also be used to improvise the complexity of the already established transport infrastructure. Conversely, traffic at intersections has been explored mainly for flow estimation, capacity and width measurements, and traffic congestion, etc., whereas, detection of micro-scale traffic interactions at intersections remains relatively under-explored. In this paper, we present a novel approach to retrieve and represent micro-scale traffic movement interactions at a non-signalized T-junction by extending a recently introduced qualitative spatio-temporal Point-Descriptor-Precedence (PDP) representation. We study how the PDP representation offers a fine solution to study the interaction of traffic flows at intersections. This permits tracking the micro-movement of vehicles in much finer detail, which is used later to retrieve movement patterns from a motion dataset. Unlike conventional approaches, we start our approach with the actual movements before modelling the static intersection environment. Additionally, with the aid of illustrative examples, we discuss how the length, width, and speed of the vehicles can be exploited in our approach to detect specific patterns more accurately. Furthermore, we address the potential benefits of our approach for traffic safety assessment and how it can be extended to a network of intersections using different transport modes." "Modeling exit choice behavior in airplane emergency evacuations" "Chenchen Xu, Yiyang Luo, Kurt Fuellhart, Quan Shao, Frank Witlox" "Understanding how people choose exits during the emergency evacuation of an airplane is fundamental to saving more lives after air accidents. Since exit choice is difficult to observe in an emergency directly, this paper utilizes a stated preference experiment to evaluate people's exit decisions in an airplane emergency evacuation. Responses were collected through online questionnaires conducted in China and the USA. Then, conditional and nested logistic models were applied, indicating significant effects from physical factors, social influences, and individual characteristics on exit choice in virtual airplane evacuations. First, a low-level emergency and traveling alone allow people to make broader exit choices. Then, people with professional aviation experience appear less likely to choose the backmost option than common air passengers, and a high BMI index positively impacts the selection of the backmost exit. Next, herding behavior was not dominant in the airplane emergency evacuation experiment, but people were found to avoid following others in rational decisions which were made in an unreal emergency. In addition, the strong impact of a family member's location on people's direction of movement was indicated in the results. Finally, the frontmost exit and movement towards the front of the aircraft were preferred in a crisis and when people travel with family. This study provides evidence of passenger exit choice behavior in airplane emergency evacuation and suggests that the seating position of family members should be taken into account to support more efficient and safer airplane evacuations." "The association between transit accessibility and space-time flexibility of shopping travel : on the moderating role of ICT use" "Rui Shao, Ben Derudder, Yongchun Yang, Frank Witlox" "Lower accessibility to transit services may lead to more constraints, making travel less flexible in space and time. By using information and communication technologies (ICT), travelers can obtain additional travel information on transit stations and transfer routes, possibly attenuating the negative effects of low transit accessibility on the space-time flexibility (SPF) of travel. Based on data from 612 interviews in Chengdu (China), this study delves into the impact of transit accessibility on the SPF of shopping travel for non-daily goods, as well as the moderating role of ICT use. Binomial logistic regression models suggest that both bus accessibility and metro accessibility are significantly and positively associated with the SPF. Nonetheless, this association is not statistically significant for those who frequently use ICT for searching transit information, suggesting an attenuating effect of ICT use. Therefore, the frequent use of ICT may mitigate the social inequality in the SPF posed by the uneven distribution of transit facilities." "Do e-shopping attitudes mediate the effect of the built environment on online shopping frequency of e-shoppers?" "Kunbo Shi, Rui Shao, Jonas De Vos, Frank Witlox" "It is widely acknowledged that e-shopping has considerable effects on e-shoppers' travel behavior. Therefore, it is valuable to investigate the built environment effects on online shopping, which can help clarify whether land use policy is effective to manage online shopping and further moderate travel demand. However, this issue has not been fully investigated in prior research. In particular, some existing studies fail to identify a significant link between the built environment and online shopping. One of the possible reasons is that the indirect effects of the built environment on e-shopping through e-shopping attitudes are rarely considered. Against this backdrop, considering the mediating role of e-shopping attitudes, this paper aims to explore the influence of the built environment on the frequency of e-shopping for clothes and shoes, food and drinks, cosmetics, and electronics. Data used in this study are acquired from 675 face-to-face interviews with online buyers in Chengdu, China, and the Structural Equation Modeling method is employed. The outcomes show that higher residential density has a positive impact on online shopping frequency. Higher accessibility to metro stations has an indirect and negative influence on e-shopping frequency through pro-e-shopping attitudes. In contrast, mediated by e-shopping attitudes, higher accessibility to bus stations has an indirect and positive impact on online shopping frequency. The mediating role of attitudes provides a possible explanation for the influences of transportation accessibility on e-shopping frequency. Land use policies seem influential in online shopping attitudes and frequency, and thus moderate e-shoppers' travel demand." "Policing directions : a systematic review on the effectiveness of police presence" "Philipp Martin Dau, Christophe Vandeviver, Maite Dewinter, Frank Witlox, Tom Vander Beken" "We systematically review the effectiveness of police presence. In doing so, we investigate concepts of police presence and differences between reported effects. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and protocols, we systematically identify and review eligible studies on police presence. Further, quality assessment and findings synthesis are used to map limitations of current research as well as grounds for future avenues. The systematic search strategies yielded 49 studies focusing on testing the effects of police presence or evaluating its measurement. We find evidence that police presence has mostly crime reduction effects on crimes related to motor theft, property, violence and guns. Police presence also reduces calls for service and improves traffic behaviour. Police presence focused on specific areas, times and types of crime achieves maximum effectiveness. The reviewed studies show a high degree of heterogeneity in reporting which limits comparability of findings across studies. Research on police presence presents evidence for significant crime preventative effects of focused police actions and shows strongest effects when focused on certain areas, times, or types of crimes. We encourage future research to focus on police presence en route and its effects, including crime prevention, traffic regulation and fear of crime." "Evolutions in undirected travel (satisfaction) during the COVID-19 pandemic" "Hannah Hook, Jonas De Vos, Veronique Van Acker, Frank Witlox" "The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated that undirected travel (UT), or trips taken for their own sake, can partly compensate for a reduction in destination-based trips due to governmental regulations. Consequently, UT (in general, but particularly during the pandemic) may be especially satisfying and therefore important to subjective well-being. However, through the course of the pandemic, changes in UT were anticipated as individuals adapted to a 'new normal'. This research - con-ducted in Flanders, Belgium - first investigates whether the characteristics of and satisfaction with UT persisted after one year into the pandemic (April 2020 to May 2021) using longitudinal panel data from two waves (n = 332). Results of paired sample t-tests indicate that UT satisfaction increased though duration of trips decreased, and results of the Sign test indicate that the fre-quency of UT generally decreased. Second, this research investigates characteristics of individuals with different UT behavior. Six profiles of UT behavior were identified based on starting or stopping UT, increasing or decreasing UT, maintaining UT frequency, or not participating in UT. Chi2 tests identified differences among profiles based on wave 1 UT frequency, most recent trip mode, socio-demographic, and household characteristics. Results indicate that participation in UT might motivate future UT, one to three UT trips per week is a maintainable frequency, UT might be important to those with smaller living spaces and those living with children or other adults, and suggest that attention should be paid to mobility equity, including how and for whom systems are planned. These findings are important to understanding the effects of long-term governmental regulations in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on travel behavior, and how investigating UT might help to challenge and reimagine traditional mobility systems post-pandemic." "Exploring non-linear built environment effects on the integration of free-floating bike-share and urban rail transport : a quantile regression approach" "Long Cheng, Kailai Wang, Jonas De Vos, Jie Huang"