Assessment of household travel patterns for transport planning purposes

Urbanization is inevitable in the Philippines due to the growing economy and rising population. This is considered a favorable development to the Philippines, but this also comes with a negative impact such as increasing demand for motorized vehicles that causes traffic congestion. The capabilities of transport planners to tackle this issue is inadequate due to the lack of or scarcity of data on the travel behavior of people in a given locality. This research aims to address this gap by providing baseline data through an understanding of travel patterns of commuters. The Province of Iloilo was taken as the appropriate study area due to its rising population, growing economy, and motivation to streamline all transport planning within the region. The study focused on understanding travel patterns by utilizing the available transport survey data gathered by the local planning staff in selected municipalities of Iloilo and processing them using cross-classification and regression analysis approaches to provide meaningful findings. Using a geographic information system, spatial patterns were determined while using a statistical software to develop and estimate linear regression and trip rate models. The results showed various characteristics of travel patterns of households per municipality and municipal class. Trip production is influenced by its distance to the capital city, mode availability, and trip purpose. While the results of the trip generation model concluded that a household size is the most influential factor in household trip generation