Inhabitant Trip Behavior Similar to Quantum Transition

Trip mode transfer is a behavior of inhabitant in the process of adjusting their trip mode. The behavior is similar to the transition of quantum. In this paper, trip mode transfer and quantum transition were compared. According to the quantum transition theory, three linear imitation models and a polynomial imitation model were built. The models were applied via 1990 MPTS (Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey) data from U.S. and 2001 CCTS (Changchun Trip Survey) data from the city of Changchun, China. The results indicate that the relations between income difference and number of transferring levels, trip distance difference and number of transferring levels, and trip distance difference and income difference are all linear and the function between trip distance difference and income difference fits quadratic and higher polynomials of which the constant items are zero when one trip mode transfers to others. The proposed models can reveal the rules of change of trip mode sharing rates.