Commuter’s journey to work travel behaviour and the aggregate road passenger travel demand in New Zealand

Abstract

Economic development has historically been strongly associated with an increase in the demand for transportation and particularly in the number of road vehicles. However, traffic congestion, deterioration in air quality and climate change concerns also arise as a result of this escalation in road transport. Since New Zealand ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, cutting down carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) emissions has been a priority for contemporary government policy. Thus, reducing CO2-e emissions from road transport turns out to be critical because this sector alone accounts for 40% of all emissions in the country’s energy emission profile in 2012 (Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment [MBIE], 2013). To date, local authorities and urban planners have shifted their interest to revitalising public transport as one practical approach of combating the negative externalities generated from road transport. Given that New Zealand, especially Auckland, has a relatively low level of public transport ridership compared to other Australasian cities, the understanding of which variables influence public transport demand at regional level, how travel decisions made by individual commuters, as well as what factors affect the demand for aggregate road passenger travel at national level become key questions to consider. This thesis contributes to the existing research on the analysis of commuter journey-to-work (JTW) behaviour in a spatial context at both the regional and the individual level. It also fills the research gap in the past literature by examining road passenger’s transport mode choices as a system of equations at the national level. Chapter 2 reviews the literature around traveller's travel behaviour and provides an overview of the methodology used in the following chapters. Using regional level JTW data, chapter 3 examines the relationship between urban form and public transport use in Auckland by applying a spatial Durbin model. Taking network effects into account, chapter 4 investigates individual commuter’s transport mode preferences in Auckland for their JTW travel by estimating a spatially autoregressive logit mode choice model. Chapter 5 develops an aggregate road passenger travel demand model using the seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) method, and the empirical results from the SUR model deliver some important policy implications in terms of achieving a reduction in the demand for both petrol and diesel cars, and also promoting the use of public transport. Chapter 6 concludes.