Investigation of the Travel Mode Choice for Work Trip in Class I Cities/Urban Agglomerations: A Case Study of Imphal

Mode choice for cities with population less than a million exhibit choice behaviors which is governed by universally common factors like cost, convenience, and comfort. In the current paper, the mode choice in the study region of Imphal is investigated. A Multinomial Logit Model (MNL) is developed, the prediction accuracy, direct and cross elasticity as well as the acceptable travel time cost and acceptable distance of the trip have been evaluated. The acceptable travel time cost of the various modes is as anticipated with the car users having a highest value. The absolute values of direct elasticity for a 1% change in out-of-pocket costs indicate a relatively inelastic change in choice probabilities of the modes. The results indicate that public policies such as increase in the out-of-pocket costs or reduction in in-vehicle times have small effect on the usage and ridership. It also means that the revenue can be increased by raising out-of-pocket costs. A hierarchy within the choice of alternatives is modeled using Nested Logit (NL). It is seen that car, two-wheelers, non-motorized transport, auto form a subset of alternatives whose choice is conditional on choosing the non-shared mode. The marginal choice is between non-shared mode, pooled services, bus, share auto, and Tata Magic. Based on the willingness-to-pay survey a choice between the existing shared services (share auto, Tata Magic) and e-auto is explored.