Article ID: | iaor20124999 |
Volume: | 46 |
Issue: | 9 |
Start Page Number: | 1465 |
End Page Number: | 1476 |
Publication Date: | Nov 2012 |
Journal: | Transportation Research Part A |
Authors: | Basu Debasis, Hunt John Douglas |
Keywords: | consumer choice, India, modelling, travel mode choice |
The paper presents valuing of qualitative and quantitative travel attributes influencing the attractiveness of suburban train service in Mumbai city, India. A stated preference experiment is designed to capture the data of sub‐urban train mode choice behavior. The behavioral data are analyzed using different modeling techniques such as multinomial logit (MNL) and mixed logit (ML). In ML model, the random parameters are assumed to follow constrained triangular distribution, where mean equals its spread. The decomposition of preference heterogeneity around the mean estimate of random parameter is also investigated using ML model. The study shows the influence of headway time and train ride time associated with a particular crowding level (expressed in density of standing passengers/m2) in choosing the sub‐urban train mode by calculating their willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) values and highlights the importance of WTP for addressing policy issues in the reduction of in‐vehicle crowding level. The present study documents new findings of the effect of crowding level on train ride time in the context of a developing country and suggests some important directions for future suburban train transport crowding valuation research.