Energy efficiency in urban landuse and transport planning for home-based daily trips, A case study of Kathmandu Valley

Abstract

Escalating transport energy demand is one of the major issues for the Kathmandu Valley, with a rapid increase in mobilization and urban sprawl. The Kathmandu Valley is the center for economic activities and educational opportunities where the daily trips that constitute work trips and educational trips have a dominant share. In this context, this research is aimed to study travel behavior, urban landuse and transport system in relation to transport energy demand for home-based daily trips, in the context of the Kathmandu Valley. Trip data of workers and students were collected from the household survey, carried out in different parts of the study area, using random sampling. Daily trips have a significant share in travel demand with about 2.1 million trips per day with modal share of private vehicles showing higher, as compared to other modes. Mode choice and trip length were studied in relation to the socio-economic and demographic background and it was found that the role of gender, age and income and household vehicle ownership were found to be influential to the travel behavior, more importantly for work trips. Travel behavior was studied in relation to urban form for the travel energy assessment. Work trips are observed to vary more spatially, than educational trips. The correlation analyses of work trips show that population density and public transport accessibility, are having little impact on travel energy, whereas increasing distance from the central business district is found to have a significant rise in travel energy. Four-Step Urban Transport Model, was developed to study the travel pattern in macro scale and for carrying out scenario analysis. The currently daily trips consume 3666 TJ annually. Cars and motorcycles contribute to most of consumption, accounting for over 80% of total transport energy. Current willingness to shift to Public Transport like Bus Rapid Transit System, leads to the reduction in transport energy up to 44% for trips along the zones with access to the service. With the balance between Trip Production and Attraction, whereby Employment and Educational Services are provided in accordance to travel demand of work and education trips, respectively, the reduction is achieved by 6%. The reduction is further increased significantly by shift from motorized private more to nonmotorized modes of transport. The research exemplifies the benefits of using travel behavior analysis

and transport modelling for studying daily trips in macro scale, to promote energy efficiency in landuse

and transport planning, in context of the Kathmandu Valley.