Trends of driving demand to inner Bangkok in situation of a congestion charging

Abstract

Traffic congestion to inner Bangkok needs to be relieved by some kind of a toll charge. The paper investigated whether and to what level the congestion charging will help to solve the congestion problem of inner Bangkok. A travel demand model is estimated and the factors influencing the driving demand for inner Bangkok, where most intensively used mass transit network exists during the years 2012-2014, are reported. The objective is to understand the drivers and investigate the degree of decreased traffic if the congestion charging scheme is implemented and also report other relevant variables. The results show that such the reported acceptable charge has a significant statistically impact on the demand with increasing degree of impact as well as other price-related variable such as fuel costs. Quantity effects such as higher income, more cars in household, more travel time spent to work, and having a parking space at office are used to increase the demand; however, these quantity factors do not have impact on the demand. Conversely, the number of dropping person used to has no impact. Spatial effects, such as the distance from home to office, the distance from office to the metro station, and price effects such as parking fees are not statistically significant. Some personnel factors were not relevant to changes in the number of trips but recently they are reducing factors; these are age, education and urgency of the trip. Factors such as toll charge, income level number of cars in household, travel time to work and parking space are factors increasing the demand. Fuel costs and the occupation officer lower the travel demand.