Travelers’ Response to Network Disruptions in Ernakulam City

Abstract

AbstractThe study aimed to investigate the travelers’ response to network disruptions, considering Ernakulam city as the study area. Ernakulam city is one of the most congested cities in Kerala with growing travel demands and insufficient infrastructure. The entire study area was divided into 13 blocks, and analysis was done for each block separately. The concept of resilience is used as a connotation for measuring performance of road network. Resilience metrics used are classified into three categories which include connectivity-based metrics, centrality-based metrics, and performance-based metrics. Programs were written in Python programming language to compute the resilience metrics. Betweenness centrality and disruption details collected from past were used to identify the critical blocks: Edappally, Paravur, Palluruthy, and Vypeen. From the network analysis, it was observed that among the four critical blocks identified Paravur had the least loss of resilience value which makes it as the most resilient block within the city. To know the responses of people to a disruption, a Revealed-Stated preference (RP-SP) survey was organized. It was observed that the responses varied depending on the type of activity. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify the variables which significantly influence the travel decision-making process in the event of a disruption. The model results showed that personal and household characteristics and trip purpose significantly influence the response of individual to a network disruption.KeywordsNetwork analysisResilienceTraffic assignment