Impact of COVID-19 on Student’s Travel Behavior in Bangalore City, Karnataka

Abstract

The COVID-19 tragedy had a significant impact on travel and demand for transportation in India before everything returned to normal. The current study is focused on students’ travel behavior in Bangalore City because commutes to college and university were most adversely affected during the pandemic. The modeling of travel demand and transportation planning in and around educational regions depend heavily on the investigation of student travel behavior in large cities like Bengaluru. An online questionnaire survey was used to gather information about changes in travel behavior before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. Gender, age, vehicle ownership, household income, travel expenditure, and travel distance all have a substantial impact on the primary trip taken according to the findings. It is also observed that the frequency of student trips reduced from 6 days per week to 3 to 4 days per week. The analysis also shows that many students chose to stay at home than PG or hostel post-COVID-19 due to concerns about the virus’s spread. To simulate the behavior change, multiple linear regression, and artificial neural networks were employed. The ANN model showed the best fit for forecasting travel behavior in terms of travel duration before COVID-19 and after the COVID-19 outbreak, according to the AUC values. The finding of the work can be used for better planning of their operations and services, especially, near colleges and universities.