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Five-star transportation: using online activity reviews to examine mode choice to non-work destinations

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Abstract

Information and communication technologies are generating unprecedented quantities of data with potential applications in transportation planning and research. Because of their focus on non-work activities, crowdsourced activity reviews such as Yelp reviews have the potential to inform how individuals make travel choices to a range of activities with significant economic impacts. Substantial numbers of Yelp reviews include transportation content, including mode choices. I use content analysis to extract and understand statements on mode from a dataset of more than 225,000 Yelp reviews in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Spatial analysis of the results shows that access to non-work destinations varies significantly by mode across the region and within neighborhoods. The findings address ongoing questions in accessibility research, including preferences for transit around rail stations and local variability in walking preferences. Yelp data do not replace travel surveys, but they provide significantly more information and spatial detail on mode choice to many non-work destinations. Though this and similar datasets show promise for several applications in transportation planning and research, the issues of potential sampling biases and data ownership and access must also be addressed for these data to become widespread tools for practioners and researchers.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

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Notes

  1. A Ripley’s K Function analysis of clustering of review locations found statistically significant clustering (p > 0.05) at scales from 0.5 to 5 km.

  2. Terms were selected based on their ability to capture the primary travel modes in Phoenix—driving and parking, walking, transit, and biking. The terms in Table 1 are the most frequently appearing words associated with these modes, leaving out terms like “park” or “sidewalk” that may have alternate interpretations.

  3. One-way ANOVA confirms that mode shares for “rail” and “parking” are significantly different across distance bands (p > 0.001).

  4. Parking mentions may decrease past 750 m because, beyond this distance, the need to recommend where or how to park also decreases. The light rail line was built along a relatively dense commercial corridor, and lower densities further from the corridor may also reduce concerns about parking availability. In further research, an examination of local activity density, as well as parking availability and utilization at block and neighborhood scales, could help shed light on whether parking recommendations are correlated with parking policies and utilization rates.

  5. Intriguingly, walking is also correlated with another facet of local station areas, destination density. In order to compare among the 28 light rail station areas along the Phoenix Metro system, a correlation analysis examined the relationship of mode to the density of Yelp-listed businesses within the area. For the correlation analysis, station areas are defined as an area with a radius of 750 m around each station. This value is based upon the findings illustrated in Fig. 2, highlighting that review with rail content fall to a minimum at this point. This measure of destination density varies significantly among the station areas, from a 4 to 79 businesses per sq km, with a median of 15 businesses per sq km. In previous research, destination density has been significantly correlated with non-auto travel, and measures like WalkScore rely upon destination density to calculate walkability (Ewing and Cervero 2010; Manaugh and El-Geneidy 2011). Only walking showed a significant correlation with business density—0.4691 (p = 0.0118).

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Acknowledgments

I am deeply grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this article for their helpful comments. Thanks also to Nathan Epstein and Nicholas Hutchinson for their efforts on this study.

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  1. Department of Urban and Environmental Planning, University of Virginia School of Architecture, PO Box 400122, Charlottesville, VA, 22904-4122, USA

    Andrew Mondschein

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Mondschein, A. Five-star transportation: using online activity reviews to examine mode choice to non-work destinations. Transportation 42, 707–722 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-015-9600-7

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