Abstract:
Vehicle Kilometres Travelled (VKT) is a key factor in transport planning and managing,
since data represent existing road transport demand or pattern in a specific area of concern.
In Sri Lanka, the expansion and development of the transport sector should be
complemented with timely updated data in order to fulfil current needs as well as future
growth scenarios as a developing country. VKT is a valuable indicator in identifying these
requirements; however, timely VKT data for the country is not available within transport
communities so far. Very few researchers have attempted to estimate timely VKT over the
past few years, and this too in few areas of Sri Lanka. This study aimed to estimate VKT in
Southern, Northern, and Eastern areas of Sri Lanka using a questionnaire based - household
travel survey. Three areas were visited and randomly selected respondents were interviewed
on their travel information on weekdays, weekends, special seasons, holidays etc. Other than
number of kilometres travelled, travel mode and socio demographic information of
respondents, all of which are useful in estimating Personal Kilometres Travelled (PKT)—
were collected. Estimating PKT of individuals seems important in Sri Lanka since a majority
of people do not own personal vehicles for travelling. PKT always refers to an individual
while VKT refers to a vehicle. The travel distances of samples were aggregated to the annual
level and weighted based on census and population data in the corresponding area of study
in order to estimate VKT/PKT per person per year. Estimated VKT and PKT for the three
areas were statistically compared based on selected socio demographic factors. The
estimated VKT would be useful in the transport sector as well as in environmental agencies’
computation of emissions and energy consumption in the country.
Citation:
Gunathilaka, S., & Amarasingha, N. (2020). Vehicle Kilometres Travelled estimates using household travel survey [Abstract].
In T.L. Gunaruwan (Ed.), Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Research for Transport and Logistics Industry 2020 (p. 14). Sri Lanka Society of Transport and Logistics. https://slstl.lk/r4tli-2020/