Development of a demand model for school trips in Colombo district, Sri Lanka

Abstract

A school trip is defined as a trip that originated from home or a temporary residential location and terminates at an educational institution. According to the ComTrans study, a major portion of the traffic congestion in the Colombo district in the morning peak and afternoon peak are due to the school traffic. Understanding the distribution of origindestination patterns of these school trips is important to manage the school traffic. This research targeted developing an origin-destination matrix for the home-to-school trips attracted to the government schools located in the Colombo district. The O-D matrix developed for the study area is further divided into four sub O-D matrices based on the mode of travel as active transportation, public transportation, private transportation and school van/bus services. Further, the research identifies a mathematical model to estimate the number of school trips between origin-destination pairs in the study area using the multiple linear regression techniques. The distribution of home-to-school trips is found to be directly proportional to the number of school-aged children residing in the origin zone, the number of students studying at separate categories of schools at the destination zone while it is inversely proportional to the distance between origin and destination zones and the number of Category I schools (which have classes up to advanced level all streams) at the origin zone. Based on the findings of this research, two mathematical models are developed for inter-zonal school trips and intra-zonal school trips separately. The outcomes of this research can be used for planning transport supply services for school children to fulfil their educational travel needs on a normal day. It may help the authorities to promote active transportation and public transportation among school children as a sustainable mode of travel. The methodology used in this study can be extended to other districts of the country to develop a national-level travel O-D matrix for school trips. Further, the mathematical model proposed in this research can be used for other districts of the country after validating it through a sample trip length frequency distribution diagram.