ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the temporal and spatial patterns of personal networks in Toronto, Canada, and Concepcin, Chile, as a way of eliciting hypotheses about the characteristics of social travel for different population groups in these two countries, providing an international overview, which will complement the Swiss case. This perspective contrasts with traditional approaches, in which transport systems are studied through an economic-based lens, which concentrates almost uniquely on the user's socio-demographic attributes as a way of explaining travel behavior. Toronto is the largest city in Canada, with inhabitants at the time of the data collection; sampling focused on the neighborhood of East York, which is located in the centre-east area of the city, with good accessibility to the subway and bus system, and relatively close to the Central Business District (CBD) area. This spatial distribution of personal contacts reflects a number of processes that need to be taken into account when studying transportation systems.
