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Generally, travel is considered a demand derived from the desire to engage in activities at destinations and travel time is also considered a wasteful time. However, if people can engage in activities while travelling, travel time is not just a wasteful time but could be a productive time. In recent years, ICTs provide travellers with various activity opportunities while travelling. This paper examined what activities train commuters were engaging in while travelling and what factors of travel environment and passengers' characteristics caused the difference in activities conducted and desired. Through on-board observation and questionnaire surveys, we found that difference in travelling mode (standing, sitting in normal/high-grade/extra-high-grade trains), the length of in-vehicle time and type of work hours affected the participation rate of different types of activities. Train environment with wider personal space and more secure privacy would induce activities restricted in the current travel environment and some commuters prefer to pay extra money to obtain it. Copyright (c) 2008 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

Generally travel behavior data are collected by self-reported questionnaire surveys. Problems with these methods include lack of reporting for short trips, poor data quality on travel start and end times, travel times, and destination locations. The burden on the respondent is also very large. The detailed and accurate travel data should be needed to evaluate the effects of TDM strategies and ITS technologies on travel behavior, but it would be difficult using traditional questionnaire surveys. This paper aims to develop travel behavior data collecting systems using global positioning system (GPS), personal handyphone system (PHS) and geographic information system (GIS), and to examine the effectiveness of the data collected by these systems and the applicability for travel behavior surveys. We conducted the surveys of collecting travel behavior data by GPS and PHS, with travel and activity diary over a week. We collected GPS data of vehicle trips in two local cities from 15 and 28 commuters respectively, and PHS data of person trips of 30 people in a local city. Examples of day-today variability analyses of travel distances, times, speeds and routes of trips, are shown using data collected by GPS. We examined the characteristics of PHS data and the differences of travel start and end times, comparing PHS data with diary data, for elderly and non-elderly people. Also comparison between datasets of the two age groups was done. Improvements of these new systems for practical use to travel surveys are summarized.

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Information and communications technologies (ICT) have provided people with many activity opportunities for communications in cyberspace. Mobile phones have made decisions about activity scheduling more flexible and changed travel behavior dramatically. Meeting and waiting behavior could be among the most dramatically changed behaviors since the introduction of ICT. Mobile phones allow one to reschedule appointment time and place without space–time constraints. Young people especially use mobile communications frequently and cleverly. A study was done to investigate young people's decisions about meeting and waiting behaviors and to analyze dynamic rescheduling behavior by mobile communications, in spatial and temporal dimensions. An on-site interviewing survey was conducted in Shinjuku, Tokyo, in December 2003. Information on telecommunications relating to (re)scheduling meeting time and place and on waiting behavior was obtained from 87 young pairs. Reasons for telecommunicating by mobile phone were classified into five categories: making an appointment and deciding on meeting time and place, rescheduling the meeting time, rescheduling the meeting place, informing of late arrival, and informing of the arrival and confirming current location. About half of those who were first to arrive participated in activities that were not at the agreed-on meeting place but were at other activity opportunities near the meeting place. The first arrival's activity choice behavior while waiting was affected by the frequency of visits to the town, whether he or she was considering the possible opportunities around the meeting place, and the length of the expected waiting time and the additional expected waiting time.