Travelers’ attitudes toward carpooling in Lahore: motives and constraints
J. Mod. Transport.
DOI 10.1007/s40534-017-0135-9
Travelers’ attitudes toward carpooling in Lahore: motives
and constraints
Muhammad Ashraf Javid1 • Tahir Mehmood2 • Hafiz Muhammad Asif2
Ahsan Ullah Vaince2 • Mohsin Raza3
•
Received: 30 December 2016 / Revised: 19 June 2017 / Accepted: 21 June 2017
The Author(s) 2017. This article is an open access publication
Abstract Traffic congestion has become a critical issue in
developing countries, as it tends to increase social costs in
terms of travel cost and time, energy consumption and
environmental degradation. With limited resources,
reducing travel demand by influencing individuals’ travel
behavior can be a better long-term solution. To achieve this
objective, alternate travel options need to be provided so
that people can commute comfortably and economically.
This study aims to identify key motives and constraints in
the consideration of carpooling policy with the help of
stated preference questionnaire survey that was conducted
in Lahore City. The designed questionnaire includes
respondents’ socioeconomic demographics, and intentions
and stated preferences on carpooling policy. Factor analysis was conducted on travelers’ responses, and a structural
model was developed for carpooling. Survey and modeling
results reveal that social, environmental and economic
benefits, disincentives on car use, preferential parking
treatment for carpooling, and comfort and convenience
attributes are significant determinants in promoting carpooling. However, people with strong belief in personal
privacy, security, freedom in traveling and carpooling
service constraints would have less potential to use the
& Muhammad Ashraf Javid
1
College of Engineering and Architecture, University of
Nizwa, Nizwa, Oman
2
Department of Transportation Engineering and Management,
University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, Pakistan
3
Roadway, Traffic and Transportation Safety Research
Center, United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, UAE
carpooling service. In addition, pro-auto and pro-carpooling attitudes, marital status, profession and travel purpose
for carpooling are also underlying factors. The findings
implicate that to promote carpooling policy it is required to
consider appropriate incentives on this service and disincentives on use of private vehicle along with modification
of people’s attitudes and intentions.
Keywords Travel behavior Travel demand management
Carpooling Stated preference Questionnaire survey
Lahore
1 Introduction
The metropolitan cities are facing the dilemma of traffic
congestion due to the rapid increase in urban population
and the travel demand. With limited public transportation
facilities, people prefer to commute by private vehicles and
mobility in the cities has become auto-dependent. The
rapid increase in motorized traffic is imposing a serious
threat to the communities because of the increase in travel
time, travel cost, energy consumption and environmental
pollution. In developing regions, capacity of infrastructure
usually increases to meet the desired demand, but at the
end, it imposes an additional economic burden on the
society. An alternative approach to minimize the traffic
congestion and its related problems is the consideration and
implementation of travel demand management (TDM)
policies. The TDM policies are those soft and hard measures that are used to reduce the travel demand of individuals by influencing their travel behavior [1]. Various
TDM measures are available for consideration such as
public transport improvements, parking treatments, land
use control, advance information to travelers, carpooling
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M. A. Javid et al.
and imposition of taxes on car ownership and usage.
Specific measures can be considered for implementation
based on the nature of problems to address in a particular
city.
Like other big cities, Lahore City is also facing the
problem of acute traffic congestion. Lahore is the second
largest city of Pakistan with a population of almost 8.65
million and an area of 1792 km2 [2]. The urban population
growth rate is almost 3%, and vehicle ownership is
increasing at a rate of 17% per annum [2]. The city is
concentrated with employment opportunities, and educational, medical and other allied facilities that generate huge
travel demand on the road network. In the absence of an
efficient public transport system in the city, the trend for
more car ownership and usage is increasing. To tackle
traffic congestion and related social and environmental
problems in a sustainable manner, we need to consider
demand management measures along with supply side
measures. In this study, carpooling TDM measures were
selected for evaluation in the local socioeconomic context.
Carpooling service is helpful in reducing traffic congestion,
energy consumption and environmental problems.
According to Sheldon and Heywood [3],‘carpooling’ is the
concept whereby vehicles are available within a community or locality for individuals to hire on a ‘club’ basis, or a
carpool is a system in which several people share rides to
work, school or other destinations. This system helps to
save money by dividing fuel costs among several individuals, instead of each person bearing the whole cost of fuel
[4]. In this study, carpooling refers to a shared transport
service that either runs on mutual coordination of the users
or is provided by some organizations from certain residential places to certain work/education places. At present,
there is a trend of traveling together among people especially students on a same vehicle with mutual understanding having same origins and destinations as it helps
them to reduce travel cost. However, well-organized or
formal carpooling service does not exist in Lahore City at
present, and studies need to be conducted for the design
and implementation of an organized carpooling service in
Lahore.
Various studies demonstrate different factors that contribute toward success and failure of carpooling. It is very
important to evaluate the potential of carpooling in the
local context of a particular region. However, most of the
existing studies are related to the developed countries and
very limited literature is available regarding potential of
carpooling in developing countries. Therefore, this paper
aims to identify the significant factors that can influence the
acceptability and effectiveness of carpooling policy in the
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local context of Lahore City. The findings of this study are
based on the results of a stated preference questionnaire
survey, factor analysis and structural equation modeling
(SEM). The rest of this paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 presents the related literature. Section 3
describes the data collection methods. Section 4 presents
the discussion on study results. And the last section summarizes the key findings and their implications.
2 Literature review
Seyedabrishami et al. [5] believe that with the help of
appropriate strategies, it is (...truncated)
