4.2. Perceived Travel Behavior while Making Transfers

4.2.1. Perceived Trip, Transfer, and Activity Behavior: One-Time Event

The first of these two questions asked subjects to consider the following transit, navigation, and mobility situation.  In the pre-test question, they answered on the basis of their normal travel skills; in the post-test question, their answers were based on considering an environment that was as rich with RIAS as was the field experiment environment.   A typical situation that might face a blind person wishing to access typical urban situations was presented.   The specific question was: “If a special concert or movie I was looking forward to attending was being held 10 miles away in an unfamiliar location that was served by an unfamiliar transit route and also required a transfer to another mode, I would probably-----?”

Table 4. 3  Trip Behavior and Mode Choice for a One-Time Event

In the pre-test interview, 12 people (40%) said they would make this trip independently.  The other 18 would more likely rely on paratransit, friends and cabs or forego the event.  With RIAS, 29 of 30 subjects (97%) said they would make the trip independently.   It appears that vision-impaired and blind people perceive they would function much more independently and use the services provided to the general public if the proper environmental information was available to them.  

4.2.2. Perceived Trip, Transfer, and Activity Behavior: Daily Job

The same scenario was repeated, but, instead of a one-time event, people were asked to perceive their behavior when considering daily travel to a job.  The specific question was:  “If a job that you wanted was located 10 miles away in an unfamiliar location that was served by an unfamiliar transit route and also required a transfer to another mode, I would probably ----?:”

Table 4. 4  Trip Behavior and Mode Choice for a Daily Job

With RIAS, all 30 subjects said they would travel independently to the new job.  This is compared to the pre-test interviews, where only 16 subjects (53%) said they would attempt the trip independently.  The other 14 would have relied on other people to get them to a job.   This highlights the difficulty in finding a way to get to work for this population.

In this section, data were presented concerning how RIAS was perceived to increase confidence, allow for more travel exploration, and result in specific behavior changes, including increased mobility and independence.   They also offered monetary benefits for this increased information, which is discussed in the next chapter (see Section 5.6 Monetary Benefit of Independent Travel ).  The next section examines actual travel behavior reported by the respondents and also their perceptions of how that activity might change if additional environmental cues were made available to them.