Escorting and mode choice decisions of members of an urban university in New Delhi, India

Abstract

This paper explores the escorting and mode choice decisions of members – faculties, staff, and married students – of an urban university in New Delhi, India. The decisions relating to school travel of children of members of a university are captured using a primary travel behavior survey. The data is further segmented based on residence location of university members, i.e., on-campus and off-campus housing. Descriptive analysis is followed by a multinomial logit model, employed to study the escorting person and mode choice decisions. This study finds similarities and differences in behaviors. Respondents staying inside the campus own more cars and motorcycles as compared to the respondents staying outside the campus. However, those staying outside possessed more bicycles than the respondents living inside the university. Further, irrespective of the location of residences, parents holding higher educational qualifications are reluctant to walk/bicycle their children to school. For on-campus residents, household car (and two-wheeler) ownership leads to fathers using personal cars for pick-up and drop off children. Household car ownership also negatively influences mothers' intentions to use active modes for child escorting. Further, for both on-campus and off-campus residents, even if households perceive the environment to be safe and secure, they have a higher dependency on private vehicles, especially by mothers. This study also estimates aggregate elasticity effects of relevant variables and discusses, from a broad viewpoint, the policy implications of the findings.