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An Analysis of the Determinants of Travel Demand Patterns in Ghana

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Transport and Mobility Futures in Urban Africa

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Abstract

Understanding the travel behaviour of road users is important in the development of transportation plans. This chapter present models for household vehicle fleet composition and person-level trip frequencies of both working and non-working adults in Ghana. The study utilizes data from the 2012 Ghana Transport Indicator Database Survey. A Multinomial logit model for vehicle fleet ownership (cars, bicycles, and motorcycles) captured the effects of socio-economic and locational factors. The negative binomial regression models for trip frequencies by mode (walk, bicycle, motorcycle, car, taxi, and bus) highlight important differences in the impacts of socio-economic and location factors on trip frequencies of workers and non-workers. The models collectively demonstrate that factors such age, gender, household composition, income and residential location all have statistically strong impacts on choices about vehicle ownership and trip frequencies by mode. To a large extent, these results appear intuitively reasonable based on common sense expectations and socio-cultural underpinnings of Ghana. The models also highlight the heterogeneity in the vehicle ownership and trip frequency choices across the different parts of the country. Overall, the models from this study can be used to forecast the impacts of changes in socio-economic characteristics of the population on both vehicle ownership and travel demand (trip frequencies) for different parts of Ghana.

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Correspondence to Sivaramakrishnan Srinivasan .

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Ankomah, M., Srinivasan, S. (2022). An Analysis of the Determinants of Travel Demand Patterns in Ghana. In: Acheampong, R.A., Lucas, K., Poku-Boansi, M., Uzondu, C. (eds) Transport and Mobility Futures in Urban Africa. The Urban Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17327-1_5

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