Estimation of a mode choice model for boat passenger transport for work trips in Colombo

Abstract

Public transportation service in Colombo canal network is an applicable alternative in addition to roads and railway network on Colombo Metropolitan Region (CMR) corridors. Though it is an environmentally friendly and one of the most economical mode of canal boat service, it remains largely under exploited in Sri Lanka. The prevailing public transportation modes such as bus, train and private transportation modes such as Cars, Motor bikes, Taxis play vital roles in passenger movements within the country. But with the increasing population & the land scarcity in Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) region vast traffic and congestion problems exists in prevailing conditions. Thus, introducing another transportation mode is essential for future. Lack of data availability in the transport mode choice modelling has create problems implementing passenger boat transportation in CMR that leads to do more researches in the field. This study intends to present an idea of developing suitable choice model on the basis of discrete choice modelling technique. Nested logit modelling is an improved version to Multinomial logit models due to its ability of modelling alternatives which have correlation among them. ALOGIT software has been used for model setup and data analysis process. A stated preference pilot survey has been carried out in CMR region by proposing a public boat service route from Wellawatta to Battaramulla. The estimated results of nested logit model indicated that Alternative Specific Constants (ASCs) and considered travel time attribute had significant effects on the choice of proposed public boat transport service in CMR. The coefficient value of travel time was -0.006835. Compared to the travel time attribute, the travel cost attribute coefficient value was less, -0.0003279. the estimated ASC values showed the preference of public for given alternatives as ASC2 (0.8978, Alternative 3) > ASC3 (0.8516, Alternative 4) > ASC 5 (0.8324, alternative 6) > ASC 6 (0.7385, alternative 7) > ASC 4 (0, alternative 5) from highest to lowest. According to the estimated nested logit model results people choose to use available bus mode option though it introduced new passenger boat service to the public transport system.