Development of a personal vehicle type choice model for western province of Sri Lanka

Abstract

Vehicle ownership is a chief determining factor in many country’s economy. In the Sri Lankancontext, the vehicle ownership rate is expressively increased, over the last decade. The roadcongestion in urban and suburban areas also has increased significantly. The predominantobjective of the research was to examine how new vehicle choice may vary in the context ofhousehold socioeconomics characteristics. Besides, the management of new pricing reformations for annual and variable charging on vehicle price itself, fuel, insurance and otheroperational aspects and change of user requirements such as enhancing vehicle seatingcapacity, shifting vehicle operating method etc. This paper examines the development of a type of personal vehicle ownership model using asample of people living in Western Province Sri Lanka. A sample survey is being conductedin the Western Region to collect household data in 2013. ALOGIT software is used to obtainthe results of this research. This research considers several potential determinants of vehiclechoice, including socio-demographic status. This study initially attempts to identify how to recognize the family's monthly income, age,occupation, social status, and the number of licensed drivers in the family's influence on theownership of the car and their criticality for the utilities of the vehicle ownership modelsInitial assessment on those factors identified that most influential factors are averagehousehold income, number of driving license holders in a household and number o householdmembers. Besides, the result of this research is to assist the GoSL in imposing the requiredtaxes and providing as much funding as possible to maximize a sustainable andenvironmentally friendly transportation system in Sri Lanka. It was envisaged that three models would be developed separately for single vehicle only, twovehicles only, and at least three personal use vehicles owning HHs. Also, it was expected tohave a nested structure of two and three or more vehicles own HHs, but the model results reveal that there is no nested structure where the entire variant is rooted and that it appeared as a single-level logit structure.