Mode choice for work journeys of urban travellers owning motorized vehicles in India

Abstract

This paper reports on research into the mode‐choice behavior of travellers owning motorized vehicles in an Indian travel environment. A disaggregate multinomial logit formulation is used for the development of the mode‐choice models. Travellers are stratified based on the type of vehicle owned by households to overcome the problem of non‐uniformity in the availability of choice opportunities. Variation in tastes of individual travellers toward the attributes that characterize the alternatives involved in the choice is accounted for by specifying the model coefficients as an appropriate function of the variable that best explains the variation. The models show a satisfactory ‘goodness‐of‐fit’ when tested by forming the likelihood ratios. The models are validated against holdout samples using tables of prediction‐success over probability ranges, which permit the use of statistical tests to check the consistency of model‐predicted choices with observed choices. The models are also utilized to quantify the elasticity of demand for travel by different modes and for estimating the value of travel time of trip makers.