Adaptation patterns to high speed rail usage in Taiwan and China

Understanding the gradual changes in travel behavior over time is essential to comprehending travelers’ adaptation process to new infrastructure. However, capturing cause and effect relationships in long-term travel behavior patterns is generally difficult to obtain even with panel data. This paper proposes a different data collection methodology, which aims at analyzing specifically the gradual changes of travel behavior. As a case study we analyze the usage of high speed rail in Taiwan and China over the last 8 years. By developing ten graphical long-term usage patterns with detailed usage descriptions, the behavioral dynamics of our sample could be captured and to some degree explained. Our results indicate that nearly all respondents can identify with one of the pattern. A comparison between stated usage frequency and our patterns illustrates further the additional information we obtain compared to “traditional” surveys. Analysis of the causes for usage changes further illustrates some marked differences between reasons for initial usage uptake (among others personality related factors), gradual usage increases (particularly service quality) and usage reductions (such as life events).