Quick Response Technique For Travel Demand Estimation In Small &

Medium Sized Cities In India

engineeringcivil.com/quick-response-technique-for-travel-demand-estimation-in-small-medium-sized-cities-in-india.html

By Prof. Madhuri K. Rathi, Mr. Patil Vivek Prabhakar

Amrutvahini College of Engineering, Sangamner

Abstract

To perform travel demand estimation for any city using conventional four step demand modeling,
it would involve lot of time and resources. As of now, to understand the travel demand for a
particular city using available parameters there are no ready reference models are available.
Considering this, an attempt has been made in this paper to model the travel prediction using the
readily available parameters. About six models were developed utilizing various parameters such
as Population, Average Household Income, Road Network Length and area of the city. The models
developed were validated by conducting the households’ surveys in two Cites Durgapur and
Gwalior. Among the six models developed, the predicted values based on Population and City
area are very close to the observed values of Durgapur and Gwalior cities.

1. INTRODUCTION

During the decades of the 1960s and1970s, urban transportation planning techniques were
developed to evaluate alternative transportation systems for entire regions. The same techniques
were also applied by many agencies to non-regional issues such as site development, corridor
analysis, and localized system changes. Large computers, considerable data for both model
calibration and application and personnel with highly specialized expertise in Computers and
modelling were required to utilize these planning techniques. Therefore, the procedures were
costly, time-consuming, and not always responsive to the needs of decision makers. Moreover,
they required modification and adaptation for a wide variety of applications. Obviously, a need
existed for less complex and more suitable procedures.

The increasing population in urban areas has resulted in increased travel demand thus leading to
traffic congestion, environmental degradation and other infrastructure related problems. When a
transport system gets overloaded due to excess travel demand, its efficiency could be improved by
providing additional capacity in the form of new modes of mass transportation or through
demand management. This can be achieved by studying the travel behavior with reference to
choice of commuters in choosing the mode or in other words by ‘Mode cope with demands. The
problems and difficulties associated with moving about within the cities and towns Choice
Modeling’. Further, the existing transportation systems are requiring expansions to of developing
economies are more complex and faced daily by urban dwellers. To address this, the relevant
solutions pertaining to the application of transport planning process in general and Travel
Demand Management (TDM) in particular can be evolved in order to alleviate problems such as
congestion, delay, accidents and environment. It goes without saying that after the application of
different TDM options it is essential to evaluate its effectiveness by conducting ‘before’ and ‘after’
studies in order to obtain the best possible solution in terms of efficiency, equity and environment

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so that informed decisions can be taken. Keeping the above aspects points in mind, the principle
objective of the study was to develop Quick Response Techniques (QRT) for travel demand
estimation aimed at applying for small and medium and cities in India.

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2. METHODOLOGY

The following sections describe the Methodology adopted in this study for fulfilling the objectives
of the study and the same is presented in Figure 1.The different tasks involved are listed below.

• Collection of data relating to traffic flows on strategically selected links of the urban road
networks in India. Collection of details regarding Per Capital Trip Rate (PCTR), Household Trip
Rate(HTR), purpose of the trips, mode split, route choices etc.

• Collection of data on influencing parameter includes population, population density, vehicle

occupancy, socio-economic characteristics (Income, sex, age, educational levels, vehicle
ownership, occupation etc.) Network characteristics (Type of road and length etc.)

• Estimation of passenger flows on the links of road network as per the modes of travel.

• Employing different techniques available such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) etc. to develop
models, which relate passenger / vehicular flows, PCTR and HTR with one or more of the above
said influencing parameters.

• Validation of the models for their suitability and practicality by selecting one or two typical cities
in India for which data is available from secondary sources / primary sources.

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2.1 Models from Secondary Data

Table 1 depicts the secondary data collected for about 23 cities for developing trip generation
models using Quick Response Techniques. The various parameters collected include population,
average monthly income, total area of the city, and total road length of the city, average monthly
expenditure on transportation, average vehicle ownership and per capita trip rate of the city.
Based on the secondary data collected, the trip generation models were developed.

Sr. CITY PCTR Population Ave. Area Road Ave. Vehicle Ownership Total
No Excluding (Lakhs) Monthly (Sq. length H.H. Exp Per 1000 PCTR
Walk H.H. Km) (km) on Tpt Population Including
Trips Income (% of Walk
(In Rs.) Monthly Trips
Car Sc/MC Cycle
Income)

1 VIZAG 1.5 10.54 3436 258.2 94.0 9 11 157 81 1.8

2 BHOPAL 1.2 10.63 3850 284.9 143.8 11.45 13 162 32 1.8

3 ROURKELA 1.2 3.99 4193 139.0 86.6 7.0 16 109 148 1.3

4 NAGPUR 1.0 16.64 4784 234.5 116.3 11.2 14 190 114 1.7

5 VADODARA 1.0 10.31 3831 108.3 159.4 9.7 23 229 105 1.5

6 PANIPAT 0.9 1.91 4061 29.2 26.0 7.5 10 86 100 1.2

7 UDAIPUR 0.9 3.08 4188 64.3 53.8 8.7 10 181 131 1.6

8 LUDHIANA 0.9 10.43 3906 136.1 115.2 8.8 20 128 82 1.8

9 VARANASI 0.8 10.3 2845 90.2 147.5 8.6 3 62 60 1.1

10 KANPUR 0.8 20.37 3327 299.0 128.2 9.1 10 101 114 1.7

11 HUBLI – 0.8 6.48 3776 190.9 73.6 7.6 12 95 65 1.2

DHARWARD

12 VIJAYAWADA 0.8 8.45 3620 332.0 73.6 8.5 9 116 131 1.1

13 GUWAHATI 0.7 5.84 4332 216.0 137.0 12 22 86 72 0.9

14 AGARTALA 0.7 1.57 3130 16.2 33.7 8.3 8 62 63 1.0

15 GURUVAYUR 0.7 1.19 3119 50.3 38.2 14.5 16 51 146 0.8

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 16 TIRUPUPUR 0.7 3.06 3939 91.0 38.9 12.8 34 210 117 0.7

17 DHANBAD 0.7 8.15 3617 201.4 219.2 8.9 9 33 28 0.9

18 MEERUT 0.5 8.5 3089 177.6 N.A. N.A. 4 42 168 0.7

19 SHIMLA 0.4 1.1 3027 35.3 69.4 5.61 11 24 0 0.8

20 PATNA N.A. 11 1836 128.6 N.A. N.A. 17 84 122 0.8

21 AGRA N.A. 9.48 N.A. 141.0 N.A. N.A. 10 80 100 N.A.

22 BAREILLY N.A. 6.17 2882 N.A. N.A. N.A. 3 80 200 N.A.

23 JAMMU N.A. N.A. 3869 N.A. 150 N.A. 17 64 50 N.A.

Table No.: 1 Secondary Data Collected For About 23 Cities for Developing Trip Generation
Models

Table 2 presents the trip generation models along with statistical analysis. For each model,
different combination of parameters were used to arrive at the best possible model for the
estimation of PCTR and brief narrative description of the models is given in Table 2.

SR. MODEL COMMENTS

NO.

1 PCTR=0.733+0.0165*Pop R2 value is low because the variation in population

had wide range among the secondary data
collected.

2 PCTR = 0.105+0.0144*Pop+.000175*AHHMI R2 value increased as compared to model 1

thereby indicating the contribution of Average
Household Income in predicting the PCTR.

3 PCTR = R2 has increased marginally as compared to

0.114+0.01*Pop+0.000167*AHHMI+0.000332*CA model-2 thereby signifying that Average Trip
Length also contributes in estimating PCTR.

4 PCTR = 0.295+0.01911*Pop+0.000134*AHHMI- R2 value didn’t improve. This may be because

0.00062*RLC beyond the basic required road length available in
a city to perform the trips, the additional road
length may not contribute in increasing the
number of trips whereas may help in smoothening
the traffic flow and distribute the trips among
different corridors.

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 5 PCTR = In this model, several parameters were used to
0.3185+0.0135*P+0.000122*AHHMI+0.000458*CA- find out the correlation. But the R2 value remained
0.00069*RLC more or less same.

Table 2: Brief description of the QRT Models

3. RESULTS &DISCUSSIONS

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3.1 TRAVEL DEMAND PREDICTION AND VALIDATION

The developed models were validated by using the primary data collected in the above two cities.
Table 3 presents the comparison between the predicted and observed values through different
models. From this table, it can be observed that model 1 and model 6 are able to estimate PCTR to
a reasonable degree of accuracy. The salient features of the developed models have been
discussed briefly below:

MODEL NO. DURGAPUR CITY GWALIOR CITY

Predicated from Observed from field Predicated from Observed from

Model Model field

1 0.8 0.86 0.87 0.74

(all trips) (all trips)

2 1.8 1.79
0.76 0.67

3 1.8 (only vehicle trips) 1.74 (only vehicle

trips)

4 1.5 1.22

5 1.5 1.11

6 0.8 0.87

Table 3: Comparison of PCTR between Model and Observed Values

• For prediction of PCTR, Avg. Household income was taken from field observations. The average
income reported may not truly represent the avg. income of city because of incorrect/refusal of
information about income by households during the survey.

• The road length parameter observed to be negative because the road length may not have direct
impact on the trips performed. It may be due to less (about 30-40) percentage of trips performed
by cars, buses and autos in small and medium sized cities.

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• For developing QRT models, the secondary data was collected for 23 cities. The regression
coefficient is less because of wide variation in city characteristics like population varying from 2-15
lakhs, different land use characteristics like industries &business, tourist places and shape of
development.

• Probably if we select samples within close group of population, size and type of development,
the regression coefficient may increase. But because of the available samples are less, in this
study, all samples were taken for model development.

• It was observed that maximum number of trips in Durgapur mainly was work trips (55%) and
educational trips (30%) whereas Gwalior has got recreational trips (20%). This implies the area
characteristics of both cities.

• The predicted values from model 1 & model 6 are very close to the observed values of Durgapur
and Gwalior cities. Other models were predicting more trips than observed trips may be because
of the Average household income used in the models for predicting trips may not exactly true
because of incorrect information by households.

4. CONCLUSIONS

To perform travel demand estimation for any city using conventional four step demand modelling,
it would involve lot of time and resources. As of now, to understand the travel demand for a
particular city using available parameters there are no ready reference models are available.
Considering this, an attempt has been made in this paper to model the travel prediction using the
readily available parameters. About six models were developed utilizing various parameters such
as Population, Average Household Income, Road Network Length and area of the city. Among the
six models developed, the predicted values from model 1 and model 6 are very close to the
observed values of Durgapur and Gwalior cities. Other models were predicting more trips than the
observed trips and this may be attributed to the Average household income used in the models
for predicting PCTR. As can be noted from the PCTR models, the average household income was
taken from field observations. However, the reported average income may not be true
representative of the prevailing income levels of the household in the candidate cities surveys and
this may be due to incorrect information provided by households on their income during the
survey. Furthermore after observing the developed models it would be more appropriate to
classify the cities which are having similar demographic and socio characteristics to predict the
travel demand estimation reasonably well.

References

• Dr. Kayitha Ravinder Dr. S. Velmurugan, Development of Quick Response Techniques (QRT),
Urban Transport Journal December 2008.

• Ar. Anuj Jaiswal, Dr. Ashutosh Sharma, Optimization of Public Transport Demand: A Case Study of
Bhopal, International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 2, Issue 7, July 2012 1
ISSN 2250-3153.

• “Quick Response – A New Approach to Planning”, TR News, 1986.

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• National Urban Transport Policy

• Sudarsanam Padam,Sanjay K. Singh, Urbanization and Urban Transport in India:the sketch for a
Policy

• Geetam Tiwari, Ph.D., Urban Transport Priorities meeting the challenge of socio-economic
diversity in Cities-Case Study Delhi, India.

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We at engineeringcivil.com are thankful to Prof. Madhuri K. Rathi and Mr. Patil Vivek Prabhakar for
submitting the research paper on “Quick Response Technique For Travel Demand Estimation In
Small & Medium Sized Cities In India” to us. We are sure this will be of great help to all those seeking
more information regarding this project.

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