Application of Hazard Based Model for Housing Location Based on Travel Distance to Work

Residential location choice modeling is one of the areas in transportation planning that attempts to examine households location search behavior incorporating their trade-offs between housing quality, prices or rents, distance to work and other key factors. This brings up the need to come up with methods to logically allocate credible choice alternatives for individuals.This article attempts to provide a detailed study of this practice to develop a modeling framework that can replicate the choice process. In order to show the potential of the method, a decision criterion—maximum distance to work—is considered the potential attribute that the household evaluates for feasible housing alternatives. It is postulated that alternatives will only be included in the choice set if the maximum work distancesatisfies the household thresholds. This research explores the application of proportional hazard models in the housing search process. Some of the specifications of hazard-based models that are typically used on temporal data are examined on work distance. A log-logistic function is used for hazard base-line. The study has used the household travel behavior survey conducted by Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP). Furthermore, several extensive land use and transportation related data sources are incorporated to complement the scope of the modeling results.