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Trends of driving demand to inner Bangkok in situation of a congestion charging

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Muanmas Wichiensin and David Boyce

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Traffic congestion to inner Bangkok needs to be relieved by some kind of a toll charge.

The paper investigated whether and to what level the congestion charging will help to solve

the congestion problem of inner Bangkok. A travel demand model is estimated and the

factors influencing the driving demand for inner Bangkok, where most intensively used

mass transit network exists during the years 2012-2014, are reported. The objective is to

understand the drivers and investigate the degree of decreased traffic if the congestion

charging scheme is implemented and also report other relevant variables. The results show

that such the reported acceptable charge has a significant statistically impact on the demand

with increasing degree of impact as well as other price-related variable such as fuel costs.

Quantity effects such as higher income, more cars in household, more travel time spent to

work, and having a parking space at office are used to increase the demand; however, these

quantity factors do not have impact on the demand. Conversely, the number of dropping

person used to has no impact. Spatial effects, such as the distance from home to office, the

distance from office to the metro station, and price effects such as parking fees are not

statistically significant. Some personnel factors were not relevant to changes in the number

of trips but recently they are reducing factors; these are age, education and urgency of the

trip. Factors such as toll charge, income level number of cars in household, travel time to

work and parking space are factors increasing the demand. Fuel costs and the occupation

officer lower the travel demand.

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Travel demand; Driver survey; Inner Bangkok; Congestion charging; Toll