THESIS ABSTRACT

Abstract

Biratnagar metropolitan city is eastern region’s industrial, business, educational and administrative centre enlisting amongst the largest city of country. The decentralization of state power and rapid urbanization cause a significant increase in the number of motor vehicles on the road. As number of trips of commuter increase, the preference for mode of travel also varies. Questionnaire survey was done at various colleges, government offices and private offices located in Biratnagar metropolitan city. This study provides information about the factors influencing the mode choice behavior for work trips and education trips. This study used SPSS software to develop multi-nominal logit model for work trips and education trips. 40.65% of people have chosen public transport for work trips. People with no vehicle ownership were 47.66% compared to people with two wheeler and four wheeler. 34.49% of total student have chosen public transport for education trips. Student’s with no vehicle ownership were 66.20% whereas student’s with two wheeler were 33.8%. Male student’s prefer two wheeler and female student’s prefer public transport for education trips. Two wheeler is most preferred mode for government job commuter’s. The public transport was considered as the base category. In case of work trips, the travel cost, gender, age, marital status and occupation are the factors statistically significant for the mode choice of commuters using two wheeler in relation to public transport. Similarly for work trips, the travel cost, travel time, gender, age, marital status, occupation and monthly income are the factors statistically significant for the mode choice of commuters using four wheeler in relation to public transport. For education trips commuter, travel distance, travel time, age and gender are significant key attributes that affect the mode choice behavior of commuter of education trips. The common factors influencing the mode choice of work trips and education trips are travel time, age and gender. This study can be used by transportation planners and agencies to predict the work trips and education trips behavior and travel demand analysis for various modes.

Keywords

Work trips mode choice, educational trips mode choice, Discrete choice model, Multi-Nominal Logit (MNL) model, Revealed preference (RP), Mode choice model.