An Analysis of the Trip Attraction Pattern for an Urban Area in a Developing Country

Transportation planning, which includes identifying the travel demand and implementing plans accordingly, plays a major role in maintaining a balanced urban transportation system. Using travel demand models, alternative socioeconomic scenarios and land-use scenarios can be modeled to estimate travel characteristics for the future. The continued growth of cities results in infrastructure developments and increased employment opportunities, thereby increasing the travel demand and consequently causing traffic and transportation problems. The importance of studying the trip generation pattern is therefore highly warranted. The present paper attempts to identify the factors that influence the trip attraction potential for the core region of Thiruvananthapuram city, the capital of Kerala, India. The attraction characteristics of various establishment types are determined by the development of trip attraction models. The models developed have shown that the trip attraction is dependent on the number of employees, floor area, and parking space.