In his research, Frank de Winter bridges an important gap in the world of mobility. Traditionally, mobility advisors are used to calculate whether solutions or measures are effective and feasible or not, in order to draw objective conclusions. Nowadays, the behaviour of people plays an increasing role in the way we should manage the mobility of people. This ’softer side’ of mobility is relatively new and it is needed to combine this with the ’objective world’ as well as possible. Frank did this for an important growing phenomenon in and around cities: bicycling! The way we experience a bicycle route is until – up to a certain degree - more decisive in terms of the route a person chooses, than, for example, the travel time in minutes. Just think of a bicycle route through a nice, green and varied environment, which attracts more bicyclists. Frank translated this into an ’experience factor’ for simulating route choice in transport models, which could probably become the way we should model mobility in the future!
If you are interested in Frank’s thesis, you can read it here (in Dutch): http://www.verkeerskunde.nl/Uploads/2019/10/Winter--Frank-de-Rapport.pdf