Development of Mode Choice Model of Parkers in Alappuzha City

Parking is the act of stopping and leaving a vehicle in a particular place, typically for a period. It’s an essential aspect of urban transportation management, crucial for maintaining traffic flow and ensuring accessibility. This study aims to assess existing parking characteristics and develop a suitable discrete choice model to predict commuters’ mode choice behavior. Alappuzha municipality, the selected study area, situated in the most western portion of Alappuzha District in Indian state of Kerala. A user opinion survey was carried out among customers and visitors along a chosen road stretch to gain a full understanding of travel behavior and factors impacting mode and parking choices. The purpose of the survey was to find out the most important factors influencing parking in Alappuzha City. The analysis is based on data collected from 1393 samples in a user opinion survey. These include a variety of personal information, travel-related data, parking patterns, and fictitious events. IBM SPSS was the software used to analyze the data samples. Vehicle category is chosen as the dependent variable and the socio-economic and travel data are independent variables. Multinomial logit model was developed separately for different modes using SPSS software. The overall prediction percentage of developed model is 73.1% and that of validation model is 77%. Since the difference of overall prediction percentage between original model and validation model is 3.9% which is less than 5%, the developed mode choice model is proved to be good. From the analysis, the parking policies are also framed for the study area for enhancing sustainable transport solutions.