INVESTIGATING DIVERSE TRIP PURPOSES AND RELATED PROBLEMS OF COMMUTERS IN URBAN PERIPHERAL AREA

Abstract

Urban peripheral areas contribute to several challenges in urban mobility improvements since the unbalance between trip purpose and land use has been found. Recent trip pattern analysis shows, most trip patterns were analyzed at the macroscopic and mesoscopic levels. However, several parameters may be overlooked at the microscopic level, especially in the short-trip distance in peripheral urban areas. Therefore, this study focuses on three objectives which are; (1) to quantify trips distribution as provincial interzonal trips classified by trips characteristics of respondents, (2) to perform statistical analysis based on the correlation between trips pattern and their problematics based on the pair of zonal trips, and (3) to suggest mobility improvement in the peripheral urban area. Pathum Thani Province is one of the peripheral urban areas of Bangkok Metropolitan Region with a variation of land classification. A grid-based questionnaire survey was collected for 2,000 samples, incorporating integrated analysis between trip patterns and problematics of trip quality in the study area. Results of the paper indicated that most of the respondents in the peripheral urban area utilized motorized vehicles regardless of the scale of mobility in trip patterns, which the most problem (e.g., traffic congestion, followed by insecurity of public transport usage, uncontrollable schedule, and the availability of service network of public transportation system, etc.) remain key challenges of mobility improvement in a peripheral urban area in Bangkok Metropolitan Region.