Abstract:
Analysis of travel pattern is an important research topic in the field of transportation
engineering and urban planning, irrespective of developed and developing countries. It
provides the background information necessary to better understand the complex
relationship among urban structure, transportation system and people’s activity participation.
The growing volume and complexity of urban travel in developing countries has become a
major concern to transportation planners, service sponsors in urban areas, and policy
makers. Designing transport strategies which meet the common political aims for the
environment and the society requires a deeper insight into the routines of individual travel
behavior. As a large proportion of population, children’s activity travel behavior is a
paramount concern to be studied. On this regard, this study uses an activity-based travel
diary survey dataset, which has been done between February 08, 2012 and February 28,
2012 and it generated a sample of 245 students in grades 6-10 in Dhaka Metropolitan Area,
Bangladesh.
In order to explore tradeoffs among factors that affect the frequency of out-of-home physical
activity including the use of active transportation this paper utilizes a Zero-inflated Poisson
(ZIP) regression model. Additionally, parametric hazard models are estimated to examine
the duration of physical activities. The results of the ZIP count model suggest that personal
and household characteristics, built environment attributes, and time commitments for other
mandatory and discretionary activities influence the frequency of participation. For example,
an increase in the number of children in households, and the presence of sidewalks, increase
the frequency of out-of home out-of-school physical activities if everything else held equal.
In contrast, travel time to school, presence of traffic intersections, and time commitment for
tutoring sessions negatively affect activity participation. In terms of modeling duration of
out-of-home physical activities, this study finds that a Weibull parametric hazard model
outperforms a log-logistic model. The duration is influenced by socio-demographic
characteristics, spatial context, and escort arrangements. For instance, car ownership and
parental escorting increase the duration of physical activity. It offers an in-depth behavioral
understanding of children’s physical activities, particularly in the context of a developing
country, which is very limited in the existing literature.
This study also examined mode choice behaviour for school trips in Dhaka City, one of the
densest cities of the world. A conventional random utility-based multinomial logit model
(MNL), a Mixed Logit (RPL) and a Latent Class Model (LCM) are used to examine the
factors affecting mode choices. The choice set includes four different modes: car, three
wheel Pedal-powered vehicles (TWPV), walk, and bus. These models were generated for
school trips to determine factors affecting trip generation. The models results reveal that
increase in travel time decreases the probability of choosing alternative modes. In addition,
socio-economic factors such as household monthly income, home ownership, and number of
children at household play vital role in choosing auto for school trips. Similarly, presence of
intersection nearby the home neighbourhood reduces the probability of walking. It is also
found that personal and household attributes, and transportation system characteristics has
significant influence on children`s mode choices for school trips.
