The effect of age and sex on travel patterns

This thesis is concerned with a narrow rather than broad view of travel patterns. The work was undertaken so as to understand better some aspects of travel behaviour and to draw inferences from this knowledge. It brings to light detailed information on the influence of age, sex and income on urban transport demand.

The first objective of the thesis is to determine whether primary personal socio-economic variables have an impact on the structure of tripmaking. The second objective is to ascertain whether the findings indicate major differences with respect to urban travel patterns and if so to draw the implications for transport planning.

This research can assist in increasing the predictive capability of demand models and allow planning to respond to the needs and requirements of each socio-economic category of travellers.

The investigation included:

- Use of urban travel data collected at the level of the individual tripmaker.

- Consideration of the three socio-economic variables in the context of varied travel demand and behaviour.

The study is reported in six chapters:

In the introductory chapter, the first two sections describe the explanatory variables and objectives of the study. The third section outlines the advantages of using disaggregated data based models and indicates how the present work may improve the use of these models.

Chapter II is a review of the literature in the field which enables the findings of this work to be compared with previous research.

The source of data and procedures used are described in Chapter III.

A description of the analysis of data is contained in Chapter IV. Analysis of variance is used to determine the statistical significance of observed variations.

In Chapter V, the findings are presented and discussed in the context of the previous work in the field.

Finally, Chapter VI outlines the major findings of the study and evaluates their implications for transport planning. Some future research recommendations based on the work are also suggested in this Chapter.