Organizations implement mobility plans to promote sustainable mobility among their employees. However, there is a lack of a comprehensive, quantitative tool that organizations can use to analyze their employees’ commuting patterns. This paper introduces a strategic trip planning application which can support long-term decision-making and better-targeted interventions. In contrast to classical trip planning applications, the introduced application does not focus on a particular trip. Instead, it simultaneously plans general trips for multiple transport modes (i.e., walking, cycling, public transport, and driving). The application ranks these modes through a utility function by quantifying travel time, costs, environmental impacts, and health benefits. Moreover, the data can be aggregated to include the employees (e.g., the monthly expenses of commuting) and organizations (e.g., the total cost of commuting). This study applies the strategic trip planner to evaluate the employees’ commuting patterns and preferences in two organizations.

The objective of strategic trip planning is to provide users and organizations with transparent, consistent and credible information to make long-term decisions. This requires different procedures in the application’s methodology at several points. Transparency means that users should be able to understand the underlying principles and when possible, have the opportunity to customize the calculations.

Even though strategic and classical trip planners have similar basic functions, they serve different purposes and are designed for different usage habits. Travelers typically use classical trip planners multiple times a day for trips in the near future. In contrast, strategic trip planners are used for long-term decision-making for commuters (e.g., choosing the housing location or buying an electric bicycle) or for organizations (e.g., implementing mobility plans). Commuters use strategic trip planners sporadically, but when they do, they prefer to customize its functionalities as much as possible. Strategic trip planners do not focus on the current traffic conditions or use current timetables, but they provide more detailed information covering the entire journey door-to-door, including the necessary preparation times that are needed before and after realizing a trip. Finally strategic trip planners can aggregate trip information for long-term use (weekly, monthly, yearly) providing the comparability of the effects of commuting. In terms of workflow, the key difference between a strategic and a regular trip planner application is how the data are pre- and post processed. Google Maps can be considered as an example to highlight the differences among trip planner options. Google Maps is a popular route planner that offers various transportation modes and provides information on distance, time, and in some cases, emissions. However, it typically shows the cost solely for taxis or shared solutions and does not account for health impacts. The thorough comparison of different modes is not supported. Due to its business model, Google Maps prioritizes fast and intuitive use and lacks extensive customization options. Additionally, it does not consider the time needed to find parking or to prepare and store a bike; it exclusively focuses on the time required to reach the destination address.

In our work, four transport modes:

• Walking
• Cycling
• Public transport
• Walking

and four cost terms were assessed:

• Travel time
• Cost
• Health benefits
• Environmental impact

Planning for every mode and evaluating each cost term, allows the comparison of each mode through a untility function. In this work, the efficiency of commute was assessed using this tool by aggregating the trips of each employee at two organizations.

Based on the employee profile data, the vast majority of the employees state that travel time is the most important factor when choosing transport mode and other factors such as costs, environmental impacts, and health benefits are moderately important. The most popular transport mode among those employees who created a detailed commuting profile is public transport, which is followed by driving and cycling. However, when evaluating the utility from the profiles, it is found that cycling is the right choice in over 50% of the cases, which is followed by driving and public transport, while merely 16-27% report cycling as their first mode of choice in the employee profile. When objectively looking at the utility values, the superiority of the bicycle is evident. It has a comparable speed to public transport and driving in case of short distances, while it is cheaper, has no emissions, and provides health benefits. Accordingly, both organizations should consider promoting cycling when developing their mobility strategies. Despite its utility, the relatively low usage of cycling might stem from that several users have additional preferences or travel based on habits not considered in this study. Yet, promoting modal shift should be realized by taking the employees’ preferences into account and developing subsidies that support sustainable mode choices.

The trip planning application can be accessed at: https://inga.bme.hu/

Varga, Balázs, et al. Strategic trip planning for commuting considering user preferences of employees in organizations. Cities 165 (2025): 106097.