CHARACTERISTICS OF TRIPS BY FOOT AND BICYCLE MODES IN INDIAN-CITY

Walking and bicycling are the two modes predominantly used for travel in urban areas of developing countries, and the location of transport- related facilities in urban areas thus is influenced by the characteri stics of these modes. The promotion of trips by these nonmotorized mod es will also help, to a significant extent, in energy conservation and environmental protection. Herein, the home-based walking and bicyclin g trips of Tiruchirapalli, India are analyzed with respect to trip len gth, and the influential variables like age, sex, occupation, trip pur pose, and time of day of travel. Significant variations in trip length s by walk and bicycle were found to exist among trip makers of differe nt categories. As walking and bicycling modes cannot be used for longe r trips, it is necessary to determine the acceptable trip lengths by t he two modes. The acceptable trip length for these modes was found by fitting polynomials to the trip-length distributions. Use of probabili ty distributions for determining the acceptable trip length has also b een illustrated in selected cases.