A study on the applicability of mobility management to change the behavior of private mode use in asian developing countries

A Study on the Applicability of Mobility Management to Change the Behavior of Private Mode Use in Asian Developing Countries の研究 by Hong Tan Van Master of Civil Engineering, Tokyo Inst

A Study on the Applicability of Mobility Management

to Change the Behavior of Private Mode Use in Asian

Developing Countries

の研究)

by Hong Tan Van Master of Civil Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2004

Bachelor of Civil Engineering, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, 2002

Submitted to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Engineering

in

Civil Engineering

at the

Tokyo Institute of Technology

Examination Committee Prof Satoshi Fujii (Chairman)

Prof Tetsuo Yai Assoc Prof Daisuke Fukuda Assoc Prof Shinya Hanaoka Assoc Prof Jan-Dirk Schmöcker

February, 2009

© 2009 Tokyo Institute of Technology - All rights reserved

A Study on the Applicability of Mobility Management

to Change the Behavior of Private Mode Use in Asian

Developing Countries

by Hong Tan Van

Abstract

The objective of this thesis was to investigate the applicability of psychological approaches such as mobility management that can induce a behavioral change from private mode usage toward public transport in Asian developing countries In the study, the results of comprehensive investigations in two Asian cities, Bangkok and

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), demonstrated that mobility management has potential to

be applied to change the behavior of private mode use toward more use of public transport Specifically:

In Bangkok, the study found that mobility management communication measures had the potential to induce up to 37% of Bangkok car users who commute to Commercial Business Districts to change to use rail and 29% of them to change to use bus It was also found that the most three important conditions that public transport service needs

to improve to meet the requirement of car users were availability, low ticket cost and access comfort for the rail; and speed, reliability and comfort for the bus The 8% greater potential for the rail than the bus means that communication mobility management to persuade car users to commute by rail would have bigger possibility

to success However at the same time, the study found that for around 32% of people

in Bangkok, it is totally impossible to use the rail, 13% higher than the bus These two factors imply that an expansion of rail service would increase more potential for the success of mobility management measures

Investigating the psychological structure of car drivers in Bangkok regarding car use reduction and public transport use, the Structural Equation Model analysis of the psychological structure based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) yielded the results that nearly all of the TPB constructs (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and moral obligation) contributed in significant proportion to the intention variances The study also found that the intention to reduce car use was a precedent factor to the intention to use the bus and the rail Such findings indicate that for those car users belonging to high potential group, communication mobility management to impact on significant psychological factors could induce them to shift

to use public transport

Besides, the study performed a pilot test of mobility management measures on transport planners Three testing methods were applied to increase the understanding

of local transport officials about Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) as well as changing their attitudes toward the implementation of BRT in their city Two methods were found to increase the planners’ inclination to implement BRT including information provision and behavior plan method Another method that provided detailed information on

using and operating a model BRT system appeared to increase the feeling of

“obligation” of the planners to develop a BRT system for their countries The combination of these methods would be an effective way to change attitudes of transport planners in developing countries toward promoting sustainable transport modes

In Ho Chi Minh City, the study found that mobility management communication measures had the potential to induce a maximum of 40–50% of motorcycle users in HCMC to change their modes of transportation The potential for changes depended

on the length and the nature of the trips Regardless of the trip purpose, long trips by motorcycle have ~10% greater potential to be switched to the bus compared to short trips Regardless of trip length, non-work/school trips also have ~10% greater potential to change than work/school trips This means that communication mobility management targeted at long, non-work/school trips would have the biggest potential payoff of modal shift from motorcycle to bus

Investigating the relationships among psychological constructs based on TPB, we found that TPB has potential for predicting the behavioral intention of mode choice in HCMC Besides, from a set of psychological factors related to various aspects of bus use, the study found four underlying factors including moral concerns, negative experiences, quality of service, and social status The regression of the intention on these four factors revealed that moral concerns and the quality of bus service are determinants of intention to use the bus in HCMC Thus, efforts to make bus service

in HCMC more attractive to motorcycle users would consequently increase patronage for the bus The significance of the factor of moral concerns indicates that a communicative mobility management measure that tries to activate moral obligation regarding socially desirable travel behavior could be expected to have potential for convincing people to use the bus in HCMC Accordingly, increasing the behavioral intention to use the bus in HCMC can be achieved by enhancing the public’s awareness of the benefits of bus use toward improving the environment and mobility for society and by making people feel “morally responsible” to cooperate in solving the current traffic situation This would be a very important mission, not only for transportation planners, but for the public in general

This study laid an important foundation for further steps in testing and implementing mobility management in Bangkok and HCMC Note that these findings may not be limited to these two cities, but should be considered the framework for developing mobility management measures for other developing countries having similar characteristics

Most of all, I want express my deep gratitude to my advisor, Professor Satoshi Fujii for his devoted guidance and thoughtful advices throughout the period of my graduate study at Tokyo Institute of Technology Appreciation is also owed to Professor Tetsuo Yai, Assoc Professor Daisuke Fukuda, Assoc Professor Shinya Hanaoka and Visiting Assoc Professor Jan-Dirk Schmöcker, who have served on the review committee of this thesis Besides, I want to express my gratitude to Dr Kasem Choocharukul for his support and senior advices

I would like to thank Professor Atsushi Fukuda (at Nihon University), Mr Oravit Hemachudha (Director of Transport Division, BMA), Mr Surawongse Swangbamrung (BMA), Dr Tuenjai Fukuda, Mr Ryosuke Oshima, and Mr Atit Tippichai and the International Association for Traffic Safety Sciences (IATSS) for their organization of the workshops in Bangkok and great supports on the collection

of data in my thesis

I am really grateful to the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Monbukagakusho) who grant me the scholarship for my study in Japan

I also thank all my friends, colleagues and fellow students at Tokyo Institute of Technology for their friendships and kind supports during my nearly-five years of studying

Finally, I would like to greatly thank my parents and my brother for their deep love and continuous encouragement

Title Paper i

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements iv

Contents v

List of Figures viii

List of Tables ix

Chapter 1 – Introduction 1

1.1 Background 1

1.1.1 Rapid urbanization in Asian developing countries 1

1.1.2 Motorization in Asian developing countries and consequences 2

1.1.3 Trends in urban transport development in Asian developing countries 5

1.1.4 Measures to manage travel demand 6

1.2 Literature review of mobility management 7

1.2.1 Theoretical background of mobility management 7

1.2.2 Definition of mobility management 8

1.2.3 The roles of mobility management as a psychological approach in changing behavior 9

1.2.4 Types of mobility management 10

1.2.5 Overview of mobility management schemes in developed countries 11

1.2.6 The effectiveness and benefits of practical mobility management 13

1.2.7 Mobility management in Asian developing countries – Why not? 14

1.2.8 Fundamentals prior to applying mobility management 15

1.3 Thesis objective and scope 16

1.4 Structure of the thesis 17

Chapter 2 - Overview of the case study cities 19

2.1 Rationale for choosing the case study cities 19

2.2 Bangkok 19

2.2.1 Social economic characteristics 19

2.2.2 Infrastructure and Transportation 21

2.2.3 Traffic problems in the city center of Bangkok 23

2.3 Ho Chi Minh City 26

2.3.1 Social economic characteristics 26

2.3.2 Infrastructure and Transportation 27

2.3.3 The seriousness of traffic condition in near future in Ho Chi Minh City as car use increases 30

2.3.3.1 Method 31

2.3.3.2 Analysis results 34

2.3.3.3 Discussion 36

2.4 Conclusions 37

Chapter 3 - Potential of behavioral change toward using public

transportation of car users in Bangkok 39

3.1 Introduction 39

3.2 Method 40

3.2.1 Sampling 40

3.2.2 Questionnaire 41

3.3 Results 42

3.2.1 Potential for inducing car commuters to use rail 42

3.3.2 Potential for inducing car commuters to use bus 43

3.3.3 Reasons to use bus or rail 43

3.3.4 Knowledge about bus and rail 44

3.4 Discussion 46

3.5 Conclusion 48

Chapter 4 - Potential of behavioral change toward using public transportation of motorcycle users in Ho Chi Minh City 49

4.1 Introduction 49

4.2 Method 50

4.2.1 Sampling 50

4.2.2 Questionnaire 51

4.3 Results 52

4.3.1 Breakdown of trips by purpose 53

4.3.2 Potential for inducing motorcycle users to use the bus 53

4.3.3 Comparison of work/school trips and trips for other purposes 54

4.3.4 Respondents’ knowledge about the bus as an alternative mode 56

4.4 Discussion 58

4.5 Comparison of the results to those in Bangkok 59

4.6 Conclusion 60

Chapter 5 - Applicability of mobility management in Bangkok 61

5.1 Background 61

5.2 Method 62

5.3 Results 64

5.3.1 The model of car use reduction 65

5.3.2 The models of rail use and bus use 65

5.4 Discussion 66

5.5 Conclusion 66

Chapter 6 - Applicability of mobility management in Ho Chi Minh City 68

6.1 The study on theory of planned behavior & its applicability to behavioral intention to travel mode use 68

6.1.1 Method 69

6.1.2 Analysis 70

6.1.2.1 Attitudinal factors 70

6.1.2.2 Structural equation modeling 72

6.1.3 Discussion 74

6.2 The study on the determinants of behavioral intention to use bus 75

6.2.1 Background 75

6.2.2 Method 77

6.2.2.1 Sample 77

6.2.2.2 Measurement 77

6.2.3 Results 78

6.2.3.1 Principal Components Analysis 79

6.2.3.2 Regression analysis 80

6.2.4 Discussion 81

6.3 Conclusion 83

Chapter 7 - Applicability of mobility management for transport planners 84

7.1 Introduction 84

7.2 Method 86

7.3 Results 89

7.3.1 Effects of informing the planners of public attitudes and perceptions of BRT 90

7.3.2 Effects of providing detailed information about the use and operating practices of model BRT systems 91

7.3.3 Effects of planning and drawing BRT routes on a city map 91

7.4 Discussion 91

7.5 Conclusion and recommendations 92

Chapter 8 - Conclusions 94

8.1 Summary 94

8.1.1 The transport problems of Asian developing countries 94

8.1.2 The necessity of managing travel demand 95

8.1.3 The potential of behavior change 95

8.1.4 The applicability of mobility management 96

8.2 Thesis contributions 97

8.3 Limitations and furthers studies 98

References 101

Appendices 112

List of Figures

Fig 1.1: Urban population in selected Asian cities from 1990 to present 1

Fig 1.2: Relationship between car ownership and GDP per capita for Asian Pacific cities 3

Fig 1.3: The process of behavior change and the role of mobility management on behavior change process 8

Fig 1.4: Thesis’s structure 18

Fig 2.1: Illustration of urban expansion in Bangkok from 1958 to 2000 20

Fig 2.2: Map of Bangkok’s population density in 2001 21

Fig 2.3: Registered four wheel vehicles in Bangkok 22

Fig 2.4: Present traffic speed in Bangkok 24

Fig 2.5: Location of frequently congested intersections in Bangkok 24

Fig 2.6: Predicted traffic situation in Bangkok in 2021 25

Fig 2.7: Ho Chi Minh City’s population 26

Fig 2.8: Map of Ho Chi Minh City’s population density in 2001 27

Fig 2.9: Average travel speeds during evening peak hour in 2002 and 2008 present 28

Fig 2.10: Four-wheel vehicle ownership in Ho Chi Minh City 28

Fig 2.11: The relationships between GDP per capital and 4-wheel vehicle ownership in Bangkok and in HCMC 29

Fig 2.12: Layout view of the modeled corridor and its branches 32

Fig 2.13: Average travel speed and percentage of congested part if motorcycle users shift to car use 34

Fig 2.14: Average travel speed and percentage of congested part if bus use increases under condition that car share becomes 40% and 60% 36

Fig 3.1: Potential of bus use and rail use by car users 43

Fig 3.2: The two most important reasons for the respondents to choose to use rail 44

Fig 3.3: The two most important reasons for the respondents to choose to use bus 44

Fig 4.1: Evaluation of travel time by mode 51

Fig 4.2: Breakdown of trips by purpose 53

Fig 4.3: Potential bus use by motorcycle users 53

Fig 4.4: Comparison of the possibility for using the bus for different trip types 54

Fig 4.5: Reasons for respondents to choose the bus 56

Fig 4.6: Comparison of the possibility for using the bus and using the rail of commuters in Bangkok and HCMC 60

Fig 6.1: Comparison of the mean scores for three aspects of attitudes across six travel modes 72

Fig 6.2: Hypothetical structure based on the Theory of Planned Behavior 73

Fig 7.1: Results of the attitudes of the public from the first workshop, presented to transport professionals in Bangkok 88

List of Tables

Table 3.1: Characteristics of survey respondents 41

Table 3.2: Percentage of respondents knowing about train/bus route attributes 45

Table 4.1: Characteristics of survey respondents 50

Table 4.2: Percentage of respondents knowing about bus route attributes 57

Table 5.1: Means and Standard deviation of psychological variables 63

Table 5.2: Estimate results of linear regression of behavioral intention to reduce car use, behavioral to use the rail and behavioral to use the bus 64

Table 6.1: Rotated factor loadings of beliefs for six travel modes 71

Table 6.2: Means and standard deviations of psychological factors by mode 71

Table 6.3: Standardized coefficients of causal paths and dummy variables estimated in structural equations model analysis of behavioral intentions to use a travel mode 74

Table 6.4: Attitudinal factors toward bus service and negative critical incidents 77

Table 6.5: Distribution of the dependent variable 78

Table 6.6: Correlations and simple regression analysis of intention to use the bus on perceptions about quality of bus service 79

Table 6.7: Rotated factor loadings of perceptions about bus service by principal components analysis 79

Table 6.8: Estimation results of ordered logistic regression of behavioral intention to use the bus 80

Table 7.1: Descriptive statistics of the participants in the experiments 87

Table 7.2: Beliefs and the questions used in the questionnaires for two experiments and two subject groups 87

Table 7.3: Mean scores (standard deviation) and t-test results of the beliefs of transport professionals about the implementation and use of BRT between phases of experiments in Bangkok 90

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Background

1.1.1 Rapid urbanization in Asian developing countries

Cities in Asian developing countries have undergone rapid population growth In recent years, the rates have accelerated faster than before partly due to economic growth, especially in Asia As can be seen in Figure 1, populations of large cities in Asia have been rising upward rapidly for the recent 20 years In 2005, Asia alone had

11 mega-cities, those with 10 million or more, for example Jakarta (24.9 million), Shanghai (17.2 million), Beijing (14.3 million), Manila (11.5 million), Bangkok (10.2 mil) etc It is estimated by UN (2002) that 13 out of 21 mega-cities will be in Asia by

2015 Except for Tokyo and Osaka, the remains are located in developing countries Still, there has been warning that in this region, fast population growth may not occur

in large urban agglomerations but the fastest growing cities are those having smaller populations This is because the growth rate of a city’s population tends to be slowed down as the population size increases Therefore, population growth together with its problems would be potentially large in other smaller urban areas within the next few years It is therefore predicted that by 2015, there will be 258 cities in Asia with a population of over one million (UN, 2002)

Fig 1.1: Urban population in selected Asian cities from 1990 to present

Note: Data is derived from a variety of sources Except for HCMC, populations of all others are in metropolitan area

Note that this high increase in urban population was mostly because of migration from the rural rather than natural factors because government in most Asian countries have had policy to control high birth rate Such migrations have led to population increase and occupational change in zones immediately outside the metropolitan area (Jones, 2002) The extension of urban areas was therefore exaggerated Consequently changing of land use from “agricultural” to “residential” and “industrial” purpose in these areas has generated dramatically changes in transportation, and thus induced greater population mobility

Even though many people in the former rural and suburban areas are gaining certain benefits from urbanization, many other people are still faced with difficulties when their living places were changed to urbanized areas Thus, urbanization may enlarge the social gap between those who could benefit from infrastructure building and those who do not Besides, due to the expansion of the urban areas to accommodate for living place of more people, many transport problems have emerged In terms of land use, the sprawling development makes it impossible to maintain accessibility to public transportation service for the newly urbanized areas Moreover, travel demand will increase when economic growth generates more new employment opportunities Thus more transport infrastructure need to be built to respond to those increasing demand The increase of income due to economic growth combining with the increase of travel demand would lead to an increase of private mode use, in other words, a phenomenon called motorization would occur

1.1.2 Motorization in Asian developing countries and consequences

As a corollary of rapid urbanization, motorization has been virtually speeding up, especially in developing countries The car ownership rates presently are dramatically increasing in many Asian developing cities (Morichi, 2005; Hayashi et al., 2004) than

in other developing regions due to comparatively higher economic growth For instance, in Beijing alone, the number of cars increased by 11% annually from 2000

to 2006 (Ma, et al., 2007) In Manila, by 2002 approximately 20% of the Metro Manila households had private car Noticeably, Bangkok, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur were known to have particularly high jump in car ownership rate From 1985 to 2002, car ownership in Jakarta increased approximately three times (Susilo et al., 2007) while Kuala Lumpur also had very high proportion of car ownership of 58% as of

2003 Meanwhile, in Bangkok between 1985 and 1990 the vehicle fleet grew by 40% With such a trend, car ownership rates in these exemplified cities possibly will soon reach the level of US cities

30-Additionally, there is a remarkable variation in motorization patterns across developing countries due to different levels of development and transport policies in the past (Sperling and Clausen, 2002; Gakenheimer and Zegras, 2004) In some cities, shares of motorcycles are quite minor while in some other cities, especially in Asia and the Pacific region, motorcycles are so prevalent Ho Chi Minh City is typical of the so-called ‘cheap’ motorization as motorcycle is a dominant mode accounting for nearly 90% of vehicle ownership Similarly, in Khon Kaen and Chiang Mai of Thailand, in Chennai and Delhi of India and in Wuhan of China, two-wheelers account for around 65 to 95% of the total vehicles Kuala Lumpur by 2003 motorcycles comprised around 40% of the city’s vehicle fleet Jakarta also witnessed

a rapid increase of motorcycles in recent years

The key factor influencing the motorization trend is level of per capita income It is inferred that motorization of car could follow a ‘stylized S- curve’ showing relationship between GPD per capita and car ownership per 1000 population (Dargay and Gately, 1999; Zegras and Gakenheimer, 2006) This relationship was verified using data of some cities in Asian Pacific regions, as can see in Figure 1.2 Besides, Vasconcellos (2001) speculated that per capital income of $US 5,000 could be the threshold at which car ownership sharply increase In the developing world, the majority of the cities are still below this level, Bangkok was said to be already above this threshold level while cities such as Delhi, Jakarta, Manila, and HCMC etc will be approaching this critical level soon In general, Sperling and Salon (2002) summarized this as followed: “At a low level of income, people generally take public transport or use some form of non-motorized transport At a middle income level, a group emerges that spends a substantial percentage of their travel time in jitney or motorcycles At a high level of income, a large percentage of trips are made in private cars” Literatures also mentioned other factors such as public policy and investment can influence the motorization

Shanghai(02)

Bangkok(94) Kuala Lumpur(95)

Note: Data derived from various sources

The horizontal axis is in logarithm scale

In developing countries, at the early stage of urbanization, the increase of motor vehicles had been a revolution to transportation when it helped reduce manual labor, making the transportation of materials and products easier, faster and more convenient

In many Asian countries such as China, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand etc motorcycles, are prevalent because with just an affordable price they could provide flexibility, convenient movement in narrow roads It should be recognized that trucks and two wheelers had provided mobility and opportunities for many people in urbanizing areas during early stages of motorization process However, the proliferation of these two wheelers for personal use in several cities lurked many risks

to the development when more roads were built to accommodate for the movement of such private modes Here regarding the problem whether motorcycle use is merely transition step to car use, it should alerted that, the contribution of motorcycles could aggravate the negative impacts of motorization since motorcycles may keep increasing even after car ownership rate is high, as can be seen from the case of Taipei

The disadvantages of motorization are however much larger than its advantages The most noticeable consequence is tremendous traffic jams The increasing number of personal-transportation vehicles boosted up the needs for roadways; however, budgets

of developing countries for building and widening infrastructure could not response to such a high demand At present many cities in developing countries now experience far worse traffic congestion than what happened in cities of developed world (Lu and Yin, 1997; Sperling and Claussen, 2002) even though car ownership level (cars/1000 populations) in developing countries is substantially lower, i.e 30 compared to 200 in developed cities The low level of infrastructure is certainly a significant factor explaining this issue For example, UITP (2001) reported that average traffic speeds

in downtown of Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, Shanghai were around 15-20 km/h, which meant that the speeds during peak hour were even worse (Morichi, 2005)

Besides traffic congestion, environmental pollution and global warming are other adverse effects of motorization Emission from motorized vehicles has become a subject of growing environmental concern Recent estimates by World Bank (2002) showed that the total economic damage due to air pollution reached up to 10% of GDP in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta Average pollutants emissions from urban transport systems, for example CO emissions, were reported as high as 2420 ton/day in Jakarta, 1485 ton/day in Manila, 324 ton/day in Beijing (Shrestha et al 2002) Shrestha et al (2002) also estimated that annual growth rates of CO2 emission during 1998-2020 of some developing mega-cities in Asia would be high Such huge amounts of toxic emissions have cumulatively contributed to devastate human living environment

Losses due to traffic congestion, air and noise pollution are not only money and time but also people’s health The consequences of motorization therefore may have very significant impacts on the income of a developing country In Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam, for example, the estimated losses due to congestion may reach a level of one billion US dollars per year, i.e., 7% of the city’s gross domestic product (HCMC Department of Transport, 2007b) With such a trend as presented above, it should be alarming that congestion in developing countries would be more severe in the coming years

High motorization would lead to intensive consumption of oil resource since motor vehicles are the largest consumers of oil with an estimation that about 60.3% oil energy consumption in 2005 globally is for transportation (International Energy Agency, 2007) Increase of fuel consumption was caused by not only the increase of trips and travel distance when people get more freedom from using private modes but also the waste of fuel burned during congestion Thus, high use of petroleum for private transportation under congested condition apparently is not a wise use of energy for transportation

The upward leap of motor vehicle ownership in many countries has caused the reduction of the demand of public transport as transit would become more and more inconvenient compared to private modes (Mohamad and Kiggundu, 2007) Besides, proliferation of the low cost motorcycles encourages an early shift from buses to motorized personal travel, like the condition in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Moreover, people who were using other sustainable transportation modes such as cycling and walking may choose not to use such modes since they feel more

dangerous when motor vehicles are more present on their way The congestion due to excessive use of private motorized vehicles increases the operation cost of road-based public transport and the travel time of public modes This condition has led to the decrease of quality of the bus, the affordable mode of transportation for the majority

of low-income people (Sohaila et al., 2004)

In fact, high level of motorization, at which private modes users excessively exploit the right to use road, has led to a phenomenon called ‘resource dilemma’ (Platt, 1973; Biel and Gärling, 1995), a common type of social dilemma This is a situation in which at short term, private mode user individually gains but after long term, their defective and ‘overusing’ behaviors would cause great losses to all users of the transport system In developing countries, people’s awareness of cooperation is considered low while the ‘resource’ is much smaller than those of developed countries

As a result, the eventual state that the whole community encounters lost, i.e heavy congestion, pollution etc will reach faster

As discussed, those negative consequences of motorization, i.e congestion, pollution, inefficient energy use, undermining environmental-friendly transport modes, and social inequity have very pronounced effects on various aspects of Asian developing societies In conclusion, the way toward high motorization is not the way to sustainability for developing countries Therefore, it would be the right way if transport planners in Asian developing countries could fully control motorization by either stopping or slowing it down However, the present situation and the trend in the near future seem not to exactly be on this direction

1.1.3 Trends in urban transport development in Asian developing countries

There has been growing interests by governments in Asian developing countries in building rail-based transit systems to respond to the shortage of capacity of road systems Metro projects have been studied or implemented in several large cities, for example Bangkok (Thailand), Mumbai (India), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Manila, Guangzhou, Tianjin (China), Jakarta, Bangdung (Indonesia), Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) However, due to the requirement of large investments, these projects have taken much longer time than expected to be put into operation Besides, many of them reach an impasse because of no fund available

Another trend is the attention to improving the quality of bus service In some cities like HCMC or Hanoi, recently major investments have been put to developing bus fleet or expanding bus network Some other cities already having bus service available such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Shenzhen have introduced higher-quality buses on their roads Besides, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects have been initiated in several countries including Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, China, Vietnam etc Among them, Jakarta and Beijing could be considered the two successful examples in implementing BRT (Matsumoto, 2003; Hook and Ernst, 2005) However, through the situations of low bus use in many Asian developing countries and few BRT routes having been implemented so far, it seems that governments in many countries are not keen on a policy to make bus a backbone public transport mode

Meanwhile, amid rapid motorization,an apparent trend that now can be seen in many countries is building more roads in response to the demand From the view point that infrastructures in many cities are still far below the requirement, the intensive infrastructure building could be a suitable policy However, the major concern is that building more roads in many cities do not go together with managing travel demand Such trends would deepen the social gap by generating more social inequity since the majority poor people cannot afford private vehicles while the minority of wealthy car users benefit from massive budgets on roadway construction Hook and Replogle (1996) stated that policies adopted across much of Asia are today promoting rapid motorization and the destruction of economically and environmentally sustainable low-cost non-motorized transportation modes Moreover, just building more roads is not a right way to deal with motorization because new roads will induce more traffic (Hills, 1996) Acharya (2005) demonstrated that urban mobility measured in terms of passenger-km per capita would increase in all metropolitan areas of developing countries as people’s income increase Therefore, it is indispensable to apply measures to manage travel demand, simultaneously to building infrastructure and to improving public transport

1.1.4 Measures to manage travel demand

The problem that road capacity cannot keep pace with growing demand is most serious in developing countries, and even in developed countries Therefore, the rational way is to use the transport infrastructure more efficiently Accordingly, one way is managing traffic, that is, to induce travelers to use other less congested routes and times of the day This way, e.g using ITS, seems to be more suitable to developed countries which have much better infrastructure and advanced technology

to control the traffic The other way is to reduce the number of private vehicles using the road network while increasing the ridership of public transport This is changing people’s travel behavior by using ‘structural strategies’ and/or psychological strategies

‘Structural strategies’ (Fujii et al., 2001a) are travel demand management (TDM) schemes, e.g system improvement, improving public transport, and other regulatory measures TDM measures which are based on regulatory or economic factors may vary by the coerciveness (Loukopoulos et al, 2001; Litman, 2002), for example, from restriction car use to road pricing, which is less coercive, to individualized marketing which is more voluntary Besides, those measures could also be classified in terms of push measures that discourage car use and pull measures that encourage the use of alternative modes (Steg and Vlek, 1997) Even though regulatory measures could instantly reduce a certain amount of car use, it was said that coercive strategies may result in negative effects and the change may be just instantaneous and people may return to use private mode as their awareness and acceptance still has not been much changed

Some Asian developing cities like Beijing, Bangkok, and Kuala Lumpur, have all explored the possibilities of applying road and congestion pricing (Ma et al., 2007; Bhattacharjee et al., 1997; Kasipillai and Chan, 2008) However, except for the clear success of Singapore’s Pricing License Scheme (Seik, 1997), those ‘hard’ measures like pricing and transportation capacity expansion might become more difficult to implement because of low public acceptance and budgetary limitation

On the other hand, psychological measures could induce behavior change through modifying psychological factors such as beliefs, attitudes, problem awareness and personal norms (Nordlund and Garvill, 2003) These ‘soft’ measures (hereafter referred to as mobility management) are non-coercive and thus not politically difficult Moreover, they do not necessary require large financial investment in relation to their positive outcomes in changing the behavior (EPPOM, 2008) This approach has been developed since last decade mostly by researchers in Australia, Europe and Japan The next section will provide a detailed description about this approach

1.2 Literature review of mobility management

1.2.1 Theoretical background of mobility management

Mobility management is a strategy that tries to yield voluntary behavioral change So the study of the applicability of this method needs to base on the science of behavior

It is believed that human behaviors are generated from the influence of different psychological factors via a complex cognition process So far, there have been several theories trying to explain behavior and how to change it For example, self-determination theory, developed by Deci and Ryan (1985), focused on importance of intrinsic motivation in driving human behavior Self-efficacy theory (Bandura, 1986) suggested that self-efficacy beliefs affect human functioning since people just act as long as they perceive their actions can produce the desired outcomes Exemplified above are motivational theories, which identify the social factors that push people to engage in activities

Unlike these two motivational theories, Ajzen (1991) in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) proposed that behavior and its intention are determined by attitude toward the behavior, the subjective norm (perceptions of social pressure to perform the behavior) and perceived behavioral control (perception of the ease or difficulty of performing the behavior) Other than motivational theory, the use and support for the theory of planned behavior are widespread, with several meta-analyses and literature reviews showing support for the general model (see Armitage and Conner, 2001; Sutton, 1998) Besides, the general model has also been extended with additional psychological mediators such as moral norm, awareness and perceived responsibility that were assumed in the norm activation theory (Schwartz, 1977) to improve the predictive power of the theory Fujii (2003) further expanded the theory by proposing that habit be another factor influencing behavior and implementation intention could

be a mediator between behavioral intention and behavior The process of behavior change is illustrated in Figure 1.3

Fig 1.3: The process of behavior change and the role of mobility management on behavior change process

Mobility management methods have their roots in psychological theory Primarily they are based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and its extension as presented in Figure 1.3 Based on the psychological structure, the factors that significantly influence behavioral intention and/or behavior are targets for mobility management measures such as communication and persuasion to make favorable changes in behavior Past studies have shown that psychological effects vary across different groups of people and types of behavior (Armitage and Connor, 2001) Though it is expected that the causal relationships between psychological factors in the structure remain having same direction and sign in different populations, the significant contribution of psychological factors in predicting intention and behavior may differ across countries In developed countries, the important role of psychological factor on intentions and behavior has been verified; this led to the application of mobility management in these cities In developing countries, however, the behavioral intention of travel-mode selection has not been well investigated, which has led to a lack of basic understanding of applying any psychological measures to tackle transportation problems Therefore, understanding the psychological structure regarding currently used travel modes in developing countries is a prerequisite to any psychological approach

1.2.2 Definition of mobility management

The basic idea of mobility management, as suggested by Atterbrand et al (2005), was

a package of voluntary actions to reduce the dependency on private car and encourage the use of other transport modes The concept “mobility management” has therefore been defined by several scholars in countries where mobility management has been applied As defined in the website of the Cities for Climate Protection Australia Program, mobility management “actively supports and encourages people to use sustainable transport It is a demand-oriented approach to changing travel behavior in favor of modes such as walking, cycling, car-pooling car-sharing and public transport” The European Platform on Mobility Management (EPOMM) gave a similar definition of the common concept of mobility management: “A concept to promote sustainable transport and to manage the demand for car use by changing travelers’ attitudes and behavior At the core of mobility management are "soft"

measures like information and communication, organizing services and coordinating activities of different partners” (EPOMM, 2008)

Fujii (2005) after synthesizing the ideas from previous mobility management models

in Australia, Europe, and Japan defined that mobility management is a transport management policy which tries to yield voluntary travel behavior change from car use into sustainable travel mode (e.g public transport, bicycle and walk) mainly by means

of communicative measures

The term “mobility management” is therefore more narrowly focused on psychological measures such as information, marketing, partnerships, communications, and promotion of sustainable modes as used in Australia, Europe, and Japan Regarding this sense, mobility management in these countries might be considered as a subset of measures within the broader U.S definition of transportation demand management (TDM) It is necessary to recognize the use of these terms when exploring demand management approaches

Mobility management can be applied in various thematic fields on a city or site level, for example communities, companies, schools and universities So far several mobility management methods have been developed including: Information Provision method, Feedback method, Behavioral Plan method, and Advice method (Fujii, 2005)

1.2.3 The roles of mobility management as a psychological approach in changing behavior

Many policy makers in developing countries may still have a perception or expectation that as long as a good public transportation service is built and/or private mode use become more costly, travelers would definitely change to use public transport However, this is not a thorough way of thinking First, people‘s attitudes may not always fully reflect how the public transport system has been improved Besides, once the public transportation service become better but is not as perfect as people’s expects, people may still not change to use public transport These points imply that even though the causal relationships theoretically exist as shown in Figure 1.3, the effects and psychological process need to be provoked by external impacts such as communication measures So mobility management needs to be there to narrow the gap between the objective quality of public transportation service and the perceived one, to provide people information of how to use public transportation service, to help people realize that it is not such difficult to use public transportation,

to make them realize their ‘responsibility’ of negative externalities caused by their private mode use as well as benefits if they choose other ways to travel Besides, mobility management such as “behavioral plan method” (Fujii and Taniguchi, 2006) could play a role to bridge between the behavioral intention and the actual behavior Figure 1.3 illustrates the process of behavior change due to different mobility management methods

Past researches also found that non-public transport users usually have negative perception about public transport (Fujii et al., 2001b) Moreover, though repeated behavior, private mode users would form a consolidated habit of driving (Aarts et al., 1997) In such cases, intention and attitudes are not enacted if they are interfered with

by habits (Verplanken and Faess, 1999) That is, they become progressively worse

predictors of behavior when habit increases in strength and vice versa Therefore, it requires some kind of psychological intervention to change people’s attitude as well

as to break the private mode use habit Mobility management is necessary for such situations

1.2.4 Types of mobility management

There are several types of mobility management which are different in terms of the location and the target of intervention measures Accordingly, there are mainly three types of mobility management, depending on locations: residential, school, and workplace The descriptions about each type of mobility management are outlined below:

Residential mobility management

This type of mobility management comprises travel behavior interventions in communities The program typically targets people across a selected area who indicate a willingness to change their travel behavior The participants in the program receive information that was designed based on the previously-reported travel behavior The information may include, for example individualized and stop-specific timetables, community maps, as well as cycling and walking guides These are to inform the participants of their transport options and motivate them to change They may further receive in-depth advice through consultation In addition, information on public transport promotion can also be provided in large scale via public campaign or television These intervention measures are expected to increase behavioral awareness thus could change the behavior of the residents

School mobility management

This mobility management scheme targets at the students and their families because schools, in addition to residences and workplaces are the main constituents generating traffic Since awareness and habit are critical factors that prevent people from changing behaviors, students are chosen for applying mobility management because young age students are at just the age of developing awareness while university student are those who have not yet built transport habits It is therefore expected that communicative measures targeting these groups of people would be more effective than communication directed at habitual car users The mobility management can be implemented as part of a program in elementary school by providing resources to support primary age students to become aware of the impact of the car on the environment, the community and their health, and to try other forms of transport (TravelSmart Australia, 2008) For example, in a program in Japan (Fujii and Taniguchi, 2005a), the pupils will be educated with interactive lessons on the global warming issues, the role of CO2 in this problem and the level of CO2 emission from car use Their families are also involved with program through answering questions about their travel activities and through getting advices and requests to modify these activities to reduce CO2 emission Such interventions are expected to change not only the behavior of using car in trips taking the pupils to school but also in other trips made by their parents

Workplace mobility management

This type of mobility management targets at working groups, especially those who commute with a single occupied car, to manage their travel demand For work place mobility management, researchers, e.g Atterbrand et al (2005), Hagihara (2007), proposed two simultaneous approaches to facilitate behavioral change: One is targeting at personal employees and the other is approaching toward employers The approach toward personal employees aims at changing the commuting behavior of individual employees This may include a sequence of steps as follows: 1/ investigating the present commuting behavior of the employees and asking them to look over other possible alternative ways to get to work; 2/ providing information about the demerits of driving to work together with information on how to commute

by public transport; and 3/ contacting directly with the employees to modify their commuting behaviors toward environmental friendly modes In addition to affecting employees, it is necessary to implement measures to influence the employers also This can be done by raising awareness of the leaders in the companies through informing them the merits of participating in the program As long as the leader group

of a company is aware of the benefits of reducing car use to their companies and to their staffs, they will be recommended to build workplace travel plans and to change regulations and facilities that encourage their employees to modify their behavior

In addition to the above three types of approaches, mobility management schemes may also involving with other measures to impact on transport agencies to improve the system for easy accessibility to public transport, to transform facilities for car use into those for walking and bicycle use, and to change the legislations and taxes that restrict car use etc

1.2.5 Overview of mobility management schemes in developed countries

Travel Blending and TravelSmart Individualized Marketing in Australia

Mobility management was initiated rather soon in Australia (in 1996) with a program named Travel Blending developed to reduce pollution by car use in Sydney before the year 2000 Olympics This program used a combination of the information provision method, the feedback method, and the advice method to convince people to “blend travel choices in a manageable but sustainable way to reduce motor vehicle use” (Rose and Ampt, 2001) Travel Blending involves in-depth analysis of people’s travel behavior to come up with suggestions on how behavior could be modified It’s basically a way to help people to reduce car use by blending their travel choices over time, thus it is expected to improve travel efficiency and decreasing the strain on transport network

In 1997, another program named TravelSmart was introduced A pilot project of this program covering 500 local people in South Perth was implemented This program used a tool called Individualized Marketing (Brög, 1998) which inform, provide skills and motivate people to change their travel behaviors Specifically, participants of the program were encouraged to voluntarily make a small change in their travel behavior, e.g to use an alternative to the car as a driver This initiative has resulted in dramatic increases in the usage of sustainable transportation mode in Perth This success of the pilot project had led to the large scale application of this technique in 8 states and local governments around Australia Currently, there are 4 smaller programs targeting

at different groups of travelers: TravelSmart schools, TravelSmart workplaces, TravelSmart destinations, TravelSmart communities Noticeably, the TravelSmart Individualized Marketing program is now being replicated in the United Kingdom, Portland and Oregon in the United States, Gothenburg in Sweden

In European countries

Mobility management in Europe has involved from TDM Since the last decade, authorities in many European countries have used TDM approaches to influence and manage the demand for transport In responding to increasing private car use, TDM approaches during this time aimed to restrain private car use and promoting public transport use Many measures have been integrated into national transport policy and implemented in European countries to meet this objective, for example, road pricing

in UK, Sweden, parking fees, land use policy (US Department of Transportation, 2006) Road pricing has been implemented in many countries such as UK, Sweden to terminate and curtail car use Besides pricing measures, many TDM organizations in European countries have been offering incentives to encourage the use of public transport Reducing fares, enhancing smooth transfer between alternative modes, increasing availability, convenience, and reliability of public transport were typical improvements made to attract more public transport users (Cleland and Cooper, 2003) Recent efforts in Europe have been devoted to encourage the use of public transportation by alternating infrastructure to benefit non-motorized access to public transport modes For example, streets in municipal areas were designed to give preference to travelers who use alternative modes to commute or to access to public transport facilities More recently, there are efforts from individual European countries and the whole union to apply relatively new approach of influencing travel behavior through advertising campaigns and marketing, encouraging citizens to make wiser travel choices and simultaneously targeting a younger, school aged demographic before their travel habits become routine

At nation level, there have been several initiatives of mobility management, using information provision method and behavioral plan method, were implemented via local-level cooperation between authorities, companies and individuals, for example TravelWise and HeadStart in UK in 1993, Travel Blend in Nottingham, commuter plans in Denmark, Netherlands etc Most of these initiatives are drafting and implementing transportation plans for wok places in which each employee was advised to elaborate a plan to use forms of transportation other than a car Even though there was not an overall evaluation for those national programs, mobility management in European countries can be considered to achieve certain success

At union level, the European Platform on Mobility Management, a network of governments in European countries engaged in mobility management, has been organized to promote and further develop mobility management in Europe MOST (Mobility Management Strategies for the next Decades) was a mobility management project supported by the European Commission It involved the participation of 32 countries in Europe MOST was designed to further develop the concept of mobility management and demonstrate the feasibility of mobility management services in practice MOST program‘s target was to enhance public awareness and to promote use of public transport by personalizing travel via mobility centers These mobility centers, located in major European cities, have been offering various transport

services to the users such as information to use all available modes, car sharing and vanpooling In addition, for commuters, a plan named Green Commuter Plan was developed to encourage both employers and employees to reduce auto travel to workplace by providing a set of incentives such as rewarding for cycling, car sharing

or using public transport to work as well as offering optional schedules of tele-work

or variable work which actually benefit both of these two parties (Rye and McGuigan, 2000)

During 3 years implementation, the MOST project was highly supported by local authorities, public transport companies and site managers since these parties realized that mobility management could solve their transportation related problems Within the project, mobility management strategies were tested in various fields (schools, hospitals, new developments etc.) Specifically, six thematic fields were used when selecting the testing sites, including: Education, health, site development, temporary sites, and mobility consulting centers

It should be noted that at the beginning, managing travel demand in Europe was basically similar to those of the US, i.e taxation, pricing, improvement of public transport The change toward mobility management measures such as individualized travel, carpool matching, and mobility management at workplaces have made travel demand management in European countries more prescient and future-oriented compared to the US (Cleland and Cooper, 2003)

In Japan

In 1998, communication based mobility management was first introduced to policy makers and researchers in Japan After that, in 1999, a pilot mobility management approach named Travel Feedback Program (TFP) was tested in Sapporo and Osaka Since then, there have been many efforts nationwide to test mobility management to find the most suitable ways to implement mobility management These attempts have used communicative techniques such as the information provision method (e.g by newspaper, newsletter), the feedback method (Taniguchi et al., 2003), and behavioral plan to appeal and persuade people to use environmentally friendly transportation modes The target groups of these attempts included students at school, car commuters in both work places and residential areas Number of mobility management testing projects has increased very fast within 8 years, reaching nearly

100 projects as of the year 2006 Based on the findings of these researches, some transportation boards in some regions, for example Kinki region, have acknowledged the necessity of implementing mobility management as a transport policy to reduce car use

1.2.6 The effectiveness and benefits of practical mobility management

Mobility management showed to be an effective strategy with promising results in promoting sustainable transportation use In Japan, a review of results of 12 TFP projects implemented in different regions in Japan from 2000 to 2005 showed that car use has reduced by 19% while public transportation use increased by approximately 32% (Taniguchi et al, 2007) The result of time analysis also revealed that these changes are maintained, some up to three years as observed so far In Australia, transport’s pilot project in South Perth achieved a 90% increase in cycling, 21% in

public transport and a 16% increase in walking trips, while a 10% reduction in car as driver only trips was observed (Brög and John, 2001) and car driver mode share in South Perth was reduced 8% as the result of the large scale application of the Travel Smart Program This change was sustained four years after the program was completed Regarding benefits, the TravelSmart Individualized marketing program has been found to be highly cost effective By considering the benefits in terms of travel time savings, environmental benefits, and network congestion reduction benefits and the costs including initial survey costs, follow up costs for implementing the mobility management program, the benefit to cost ratio for Travel Smart was estimated to be 13:1 in the City of South Perth (Department of Transport, 1999, 2000; Ker and James, 1999) and to be around 6:1 for Travel Blending (Tisato and Robinson, 1999)

Mobility management in European countries has also achieved certain results For example, individualized marketing initiatives in UK have reduced car driver trips by between 5% and 16% (Department for Transport, 2004) An overview of some mobility management projects in Europe showed that mobility management measures have brought about 7 to 38% car use reduction with significant increases of sustainable mode use (MOST, 2003) The effectiveness and economic benefits of mobility management programs are probably among the most important factors for convincing potential followers, decision takers and funding institutions in developed countries

1.2.7 Mobility management in Asian developing countries – Why not?

Mobility management has not yet been applied in Asian developing countries, therefore it is still unclear whether mobility management is effective or not This is partly because so far, few studies have investigated the psychological factors relevant

to travel mode choice in these countries Therefore, studying the applicability of psychological measures such as mobility management in developing countries is necessary Besides, with the fact that people in many Asian developing countries likely favor private car use over public transit use (Action Plans for Reducing Vehicle Emissions, 2002), the application of psychological strategies could also be very important for managing transport demand

An additional form of mobility management for Asian developing countries

In developed countries, psychological strategies have been applied since recent years while the ‘structural strategies’ have been strongly implemented for long time and until now, these countries already have relatively good infrastructure for both public and private transport Meanwhile, in most developing countries, structural strategies for transit-oriented development might not be well planned and promoted while psychological strategies are even completely neglected In that view, while transport

in developing countries are far lagged behind that in developed countries, mobility management is more necessary for developing countries even though at present they still need to focus on infrastructure building and legislative measures The combination of ‘soft’ measures i.e., mobility management and ‘hard’ measures, i.e structural strategies, could help facilitate the development of public transport system

in these countries Litman (2002) speculated that effective mobility management at

early stages of infrastructure development would be much better than when people are too car-dependent

Moreover, measures proposed by transport planners in many Asian developing cities are still not exclusively oriented toward environmental friendly transport As remarked by Litman (2002), most transport officials and decision makers are relatively wealthy and may possess private vehicles, so they personally tend to prefer automobile-oriented improvements to transit-oriented development Besides, the cause may also be due to the differences between transport planners in developed and developing countries in terms of planning visions and awareness about importance of sustainable transport

The discussion above implies that in developing countries, besides the conventional mobility management targeting at the public or travelers, we need intervention measures targeting transport planners to affect their intention and consensus on restraining private mode use and on developing transit oriented policies Therefore, this thesis suggests an additional form of mobility management for Asian developing countries, that is, mobility management to enhance the awareness and attitude of transport planners

1.2.8 Fundamentals prior to applying mobility management

There are generally two main problems to be considered prior to applying mobility management First, we need to know whether there is a large potential to make a change from private mode use to other sustainable transport use Specifically, the questions are how many percents of private mode trips are in subjective situation (Brög et al., 1999) and which types of trips are potential for behavioral change (Brög and Erl, 1996) Seethaler and Rose (2003) reasoned such a potential in terms of three rationales: external barriers which are objective constraints, internal barriers which are (mis-)perceptions and the habitual nature of the decision process

Information about the potential could be acquired via intensive dialogs with individuals and households to investigate each individual trip (Brög and Erl, 1980) Still, such a method requires much time and effort, but could yield higher accuracy, thus it is suitable for large-scale implementation of mobility management For applying Travel Smart and other types of mobility management measures, such kinds

of investigations had been implemented in Australian cities, and German cities etc… (James and Brög, 1999) Another way is utilize travel demand models to analyze and

to calculate how many trips in a certain network could be transferred to sustainable modes (Mozon and Vega, 2006) However, this analysis requires disaggregated mobility data, and therefore it seems to be more suitable to developed countries where person trip data is normally available

As long as the potential is verified, the problem of inducing behavioral change is just the effectiveness of the measures to correct subjective perceptions Regarding this, it

is necessary to know whether and what mechanism of persuasion, etc information and communication, is effective to change people’s subjective perceptions There are three approaches that explicate communication methods and messages for persuasion, attitude and behavior change, they are: cognitive response approach (like the TPB),

attribution approach and heuristic processing approach (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993) Each approach itself generates several principles of persuasion

For social-cognitive approach, researchers in transport psychology in developed countries have implemented many studies regarding measures to influence intention and behavior, for example, Fujii and Kitamura (2003) in using temporal structural change to break behavior, Gärling et al (2001) in studying determinants of less-deliberate driving choice etc These studies helped identify suitable principles of persuasion for mobility management and that led to the test and the application of mobility management in countries like Australian, Europe and Japan Meanwhile, in developing countries, there are few studies about the role of psychological factors in predicting intention and behavior, representatively for example, a study by Choocharukul and Fujii (2007) about behavior of future mode choice in Bangkok, a study by Joewono and Kubota (2007) about overall satisfaction and loyalty in using para-transit etc However, these studies are still incoherent and thus they are not sufficient for a clear conclusion about the possibility of behavioral change by using some certain communication tools

1.3 Thesis objective and scope

Given the background discussed above, the objective of this thesis was to investigate the applicability of psychological approach such as mobility management that can induce the behavior change of private mode use toward using public transport in Asian developing cities This is finally for a sustainability of transportation and sustainable development of developing countries Towards this goal, the thesis built

up three specific objectives, they are:

• To investigate the potentials of changing the behavior of private mode users toward more public transport use

• To investigate applicability of mobility management in terms of psychological aspect

• To test the efficiency of mobility management methods used to increase the awareness and to change the attitudes of local transport planners toward sustainable transport system

Scope of the thesis

As stated in the objective, this thesis attempts to study the necessary, the potential and the applicability of using psychological approach to change the behavior of private mode users in Asian developing countries rather than developed countries where psychological approach has been widely tested and applied Therefore, to discuss on these aspects of using psychological approach, the thesis will use exemplified studies

in some Asian developing cities which are facing with many problems regarding private mode use The scope of this thesis is defined as follows:

• The thesis targets at Asian developing countries

• The data analysis is limited to two representative cities: Bangkok and HCMC which are representative in terms of levels of motorization

• The thesis will be limited to investigating the applicability of mobility management to change behavior of private mode use

• For Bangkok, the data will be limited to Commercial Business District (CBD) areas with the purpose to investigate the applicability of mobility management to change behavior of car use from/to CBD areas during peak hours

The results of studies will be useful for further steps in testing and implementing mobility management in Bangkok and HCMC However, it should be noted that similarities in culture between Asian countries and identical transport problems existing in these countries indicate that the findings of this thesis may not be limited

to these two cities, but should be considered the framework for developing mobility management measures for other Asian developing countries

1.4 Structure of the thesis

The remainder of this thesis is organized as follows:

• Chapter 2 presents an overview of various aspects of the two case study cities: Bangkok and HCMC Social economic factors, infrastructure and transportation, policies on transportation, and traffic problems will be discussed Traffic simulation will be implemented for a corridor in HCMC to demonstrate the seriousness of future traffic situation in HCMC, after modal shift from motorcycle

to automobile This chapter will show the thesis’s arguments about the necessary

of intervention measures to manage the travel demand

• Chapter 3 and chapter 4 will investigate the potential of shifting from motorcycle

to bus use in HCMC, and from car to PT use for commuting trips in Bangkok The chapters will also investigate factors that public transport systems in these two cities need to be improved to attract more passengers Comparisons between the two cities will also be mentioned These two chapters will indicate the potentials that private mode use could be change to public transport use in these two cities

• Chapter 5 explores the psychological determinants of behavioral intentions to use travel modes based on Theory of Planned Behavior and the effect of psychological factors concerning motorcycle users’ behavioral intention to use the bus in HCMC The chapter will show the applicability of psychological approach in changing the behavior of private mode use of people in HCMC

• Chapter 6 investigates the psychological structure of Bangkok’s people regarding car use and public transport use

• Chapter 7 is to test whether educational methods as tool of mobility management are effective to increase understandings as well as to change the attitudes of local transport planners toward implementing sustainable transport system

• Chapter 8 summarizes the work done in this thesis, including conclusions and directions for future research

Fig 1.4: Thesis’s structure

MANAGEMENT METHODS ON TRANSPORT PLANNERS

CAR TO PUBLIC TRANSPORT USE IN BK

STUDY CITIES: BANGKOK & HCMC

MOTORBIKE TO BUS USE IN HCMC

Chapter 2

Overview of the case study cities

This chapter provides an overview of various aspects of the case study cities: Bangkok and HCMC, including social economic factors, infrastructure and transportation, policies on transportation, and traffic problems Traffic simulation was implemented for a corridor in HCMC to demonstrate the seriousness of future traffic situation in HCMC, in case of modal shift from motorcycle to automobile From a general view, this chapter is to show the arguments about the necessity of intervention measures to manage the travel demand

2.1 Rationale for choosing the case study cities

In this thesis, Bangkok of Thailand and Ho Chi Minh City of Vietnam were chosen for studying the applicability of mobility management in developing countries due to the following reasons:

• These two big cities have high motorization and urbanization speeds

• The two cities share an inherent characteristic with other Asian developing cities: traffic congestion has an increasingly negative effect on the economy and people’s lives

• They are representative of some Asian developing countries in terms of levels of development and patterns of motorization Specifically, HCMC is just at the early start of rapid development and its residents are highly dependent on motorcycles for travel while Bangkok is at higher level of economic and infrastructure development and is highly dependent on car use Therefore, two types of behavior change could be studied: From car use to rail and bus use and MC use to bus use

In these regards, the two cities can be considered typical for many Asian developing cities in terms of level of development and traffic characteristics In the following sections, characteristics of these two cites in various respects are presented

2.2 Bangkok

2.2.1 Social economic characteristics

Bangkok is an economically dynamic city in Asian region and also one of the world's most popular destinations for tourists The economy of the city was rapidly developed

during the 80s and 90s However, due the impacts of the financial crisis in 1997, Bangkok’s economic growth was significantly reduced after than and now it has been recovered Presently, this economic center of Thailand produces about 43% of the country's GDP The rapid economic development in the past had led to the construction of many infrastructures for transportation As a result, Bangkok nowadays could be considered a modern city in Asian region

Bangkok, having grown from a city scattered along the the Chao Phraya river, started off with a population of some 50,000 about 200 years ago As can be seen in Figure 2.1, the city witnessed the rapid urbanization within the last 40 years when the city’s residential and business districts have expanded more than twice from 1960s Now Bangkok has 50 districts with a total area of 1569 square kilometers The population has also increased rapidly during this time At the end of 2007, this city had the registered population of 6.972 million people The Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR), including Bangkok city and its five neighborhood provinces, was estimated to have a population of over 10 million people The population density of this city is therefore around 4,444 persons/sq.km There are nine important business districts located near the city center which are always crowded with people and vehicles coming there for working and doing business, financial, creative activities As shown

in Figure 2.2, high-populated zones such as business districts and residential areas are continuously expanding and tend to move farther away from the city center thus this made Bangkok more dispersed Many residential areas were built around the metropolitan area, accommodating for immigrants from neighbor provinces as well as for people moving out from the city center

Fig 2.1: Illustration of urban expansion in Bangkok from 1958 to 2000 (Source Department of Land Transport (DLT))

1967

Fig 2.2: Map of Bangkok’s population density in 2001

in this city, the government chose to follow a policy to build more roads in response

to the increased demand of road traffic while they did not work out any specific plan

on urban development As a consequence, the new residential areas developed along new built major highways What's more, many roads were constructed as the results

of big allocations of budget by the government for transportation section in the implementation of the 1st through the 7thNational Economic and Social Development plan (Rujopakarn, 2003) As of 2000, Bangkok Metropolitan Region had a network of 4,700 km at-grade roads (ADB, 2005) However, the presence road network seems to

be insufficient to meet the high and increasing travel demand in this city

The coming-back upward trend of car ownership

The motorization process, started early from 1960s, initialized the tendency of preference of car use in several decades later in Bangkok Additionally, the unplanned sprawling expansion of the city has fueled the demand of car use, as people need to travel longer distances from their home and the city center Moreover, in term of psychological aspect, Bangkok residents seem to favor cars as people in many other Asian countries (Narupiti, 2006) They might have strong view that car ownership is one of the main elements deciding social status As found by Van and Fujii (2006), the symbolic affective value of the cars was evaluated high in Bangkok, similar to those in Bangdung, Ho Chi Minh City and Manila

Due to those reasons, Bangkok has now become a city of car dependency Car ownership soared up during the economic boom in the 1980s, from about 48 cars per

1000 people in 1985 to about 161 cars per 1000 people in 1990 (Hayashi et al., 2004) Figure 2.3 shows that after several years being influenced by the financial crisis in late 1997, car ownership’s upward trend resumed with a faster rate, increasing from 1.96 mil vehicles in 2003 (ADB, 2005) to 3.2 mil vehicles as of the end of 2007 (Department of Land Transport, 2007), indicating an average increase of 16% per year Such a high increase is alarming and lurking dangers to the traffic if no preventing action is taken At present, among 15.8 mil trips generated in Bangkok per day, trips by private vehicles account for 57% and car has become a habitual mode choice of many people (OCMLT, 2007)

0 500,000 1,000,000

The bus network in Bangkok is generally wide and evenly spread across the city The bus mainly serves major roads while Bangkok residents are more likely to live on minor roads Many bus users have to rely on some feeder modes to access to bus stops Still, statistical data by Ayudhya et al (2007) shows that the average time to access to the bus from residential areas is not so high, at 7.05 minutes (SD = 9.5) walking distance In addition, bus fares are rather low compared to other modes of transport However, well-to-do people may still rate service quality of bus low Even bus users seem to turn their backs on the bus service Bus patronage has been sharply declining from 2.8 million passengers per day in 2000 to around 2.0 million in 2005 (BMTA, 2007) Many bus users probably shifted to use car as motorized vehicles increased by approximately 10% per year during this period (DLT, 2007) The reason for such a change could be due to the poor public transport service But more importantly, transport policies for Bangkok have been favorable to private mode use (Hanaoka, 2007; Rujopakarn, 2003; Rimmer and Dick, 2000) Thus, in such a dense city with

1 A kind of local para-transit that is open at the back and can carry up to around 15 passengers It has

no designated bus stops, so passengers have to flag them down to catch a ride

excessive car use and a public transport system highly reliant on road, traffic congestion is inevitable (Barter, 2000) At present, road-based public transport modes including bus, van, motorcycle taxi and tuk-tuk etc are carrying 38.7% trips

For urban railways, Bangkok has three lines being operated by two companies The recently-inaugurated subway line (MRTA) started its service in 2004 However, this line is now operating under capacity, with just around 165,000 riders/day (BMCL, 2007) accounting for 1.5% of mode share The other two lines, named BTS have more patronage than the MRTA line Presently, the ridership of BTS is around 350,000 per day, making up 2.7% of the total travel demand As observed, the BTS trains sometimes get packed during peak hours Still, the line’s capacity could be increased without much difficulty because the operating company is using only three passenger cars for the train whereas the platforms and the system were already designed to accommodate for longer trains Providing that the operating company adds more cars,

it would be able to attract more new passengers as well as would increase the comfort

of its current riders

Transport policy of Bangkok

Even though, Bangkok government was advised by the German Agency for Technical Cooperation from the early stage of motorization that they should follow a public transport oriented policy that restrict car ownership and use, such a policy has not been implemented (Rujopakarn, 2003, Kocks, 1975) At present, TDM measures such

as road pricing has been considered several times by the government; however, no measures to manage the travel demand have been actually implemented in this city Instead, the government’s tendency may be to continue to deal with car congestion via technical measures such as road construction or traffic management using Intelligent Traffic System

Regarding public transport, Bangkok Metropolitan Administration has a policy to increase the coverage of Bangkok PT network by extending the railway network and implementing some BRT routes The projects of those plans, which will be finished within the next few years, will significantly increase the capacity and quality of PT service in Bangkok Therefore, it can be inferred that the current PT system in Bangkok still has much room to accommodate more passengers and in very near future, more room will be added Such an assessment implies that, in terms of

capacity, there are potentials for car commuters to shift to use rail/bus

2.2.3 Traffic problems in the city center of Bangkok

As private vehicle usage continues to outstrip infrastructure development, notorious traffic jams happen daily in Bangkok’s city center, where average traffic speed during peak hours usually drops down to around 15 km/h in the inner area of Bangkok As Figure 2.4 shows, average travel speed in the zone within the city center is very low More seriously, traffic congestions happen frequently at around 83 intersections Figure 2.5 shows that many of those critical intersections concentrate at the city center, some spread all over Bangkok’s downtown and others are at the gateways to the city The source of serious traffic congestion may be rooted from inadequate provision of infrastructure that could not respond to road user demand within Bangkok’s city

center As investigated by Hayashi et al (2004), length of road per passenger car in Bangkok was just around 1m/passenger car

Fig 2.4: Present traffic speed in Bangkok (Source: Bangkok Metropolitan Administration)

Fig 2.5: Location of frequently congested intersections in Bangkok (Source: Department of Land Transport)

Due to the dispersion of residential areas in Bangkok, most commuting trips are generated from outer zones to city center Therefore, commuting to Bangkok’s city center by private vehicles has been increasing rapidly during the last 5 years and it has become a dominant travel pattern Moreover, the recent resume trend of increase of automobile ownership further exacerbates the severe traffic congestion in CBD of Bangkok Furthermore, traffic in Bangkok is forecasted to be even worse if car increases with such a pace The result of macro simulation of traffic in 2021 by Bangkok’s Urban Rail Transportation Master Plan in Figure 2.6 shows that traffic in the majority of roads in Bangkok would pass the saturation level The congestion will not merely concentrate in the city center but would spread to the whole metropolitan area Especially, the domino effect of jamming the traffic will occur in all roads in the city center, which forms a deadlock situation with no route for vehicle to escape This

is an extremely dangerous scenario for the traffic in Bangkok

Fig 2.6: Predicted traffic situation in Bangkok in 2021 (Source: Bangkok’s Urban Rail Transportation Master Plan, URTM)

Since the 80s, such severe traffic jams have impaired the performance of the buses which run in a mixed mode with cars The declination of bus patronage caused huge deficits to bus operators and a greater burden of government subsidy to bus services More seriously, the deficit in bus operation is one of the main factors that lead to the reduction of the quality of bus service which in turn causes further declination of bus ridership and greater shift to other private modes This series of mutual causes and consequences presents are worsening the transport problems, not only in Bangkok, but also in other Asian developing countries

Not only congestion, the center area of Bangkok is also suffering from heavy pollution, especially near the city center Measurements of ambient zone in Bangkok

in 2005 showed that maximum values of concentrations exceeded the standards significantly and frequently (ADB, 2005) A great number of traffic accidents caused

by the huge number of motorized vehicles are also another problem to be concerned

in Bangkok There were more than 70,000 accidents per year in Bangkok as reported

by Royal Thai Police in 1994, and these figures have been stable, as observed until

2000 even though measures to enhance safety such as regulations on wearing helmets and front seat wearing seat belt were executed The excessive use of private modes has caused many negative externalities to Bangkok’s society and traffic and those vicious impacts are predicted to be escalated when car use continues to increase uncontrollably

2.3 Ho Chi Minh City

2.3.1 Social economic characteristics

Ho Chi Minh City is the most important economic center in Vietnam as it accounts for 20% of Vietnam’s GDP The GDP growth rate of the city was up rapidly recent years from 7.4% in 2001 to 12.2% in 2005 and since then the city has maintained growth rates higher than this level until now The city is therefore predicted to reach the GDP per capita of approximately 4,600 USD by 2015

HCMC is the largest metropolitan area in Vietnam with an area of about 2,100 sq km The city has a population growing at an average of 3.3% over the last 10 years, from 4.87 mil in 1997 to 6.65 mil in 2000 As can be seen in Figure 2.7 the population of HCMC has been increasing rapidly since 1975, mainly due to large immigration from the north and from adjacent provinces With the current increase rate, the city's population is forecasted to reach 10 million by 2020

Despite having large area, the city has had its population concentrated in an area of 27

to 126 km2 around the city center until recent years, as depicted in Figure 2.8 However, the inhabitants tend to be live more dispersedly as the population and economic continues growing Moreover, city planning and regulations further encourage this Accordingly, in line with the first master plan in 2002 for development of infrastructure for the city until 2020, land use in the suburban changed with the formation of new inner districts and the expansion of residential areas to the outskirt As a result, urban sprawl has been speeded up as many residential areas, 10 to 20 km away from city center, have been planning and building

0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000

Fig 2.8: Map of Ho Chi Minh City’s population density in 2001 (Source: HOUTRANS)

2.3.2 Infrastructure and Transportation

Infrastructure

HCMC now has 3,365 roads with total length of about 3,223 km The road network density is 1.5 km/km2 or ~1% area of road space relative to urban area (HCMC Department of Transport, 2007a), far below the level of other developed cities Road supply is therefore far below the high demand of road use, while the speed of infrastructure construction is quiet slow due to many reasons Developing cities like HCMC must build more transportation infrastructure to meet the growing travel demand However, the city government acknowledges that with their best effort, the road surface for traffic could augment just 1-2% percent per year amid the fact that number of vehicles is increasing 10-12% per year, thus building sufficient roads to accommodate the increasing travel demand of motor vehicles is virtually impossible

Motorization

As mentioned above, together with population and economic growth, motorization has been speeded up in this city From 1995 to 2008, number of registered motorcycles has increase from 1.06 mil vehicles to more than 3.6 mil Note that this level of motorcycle ownership may be near to saturation level since there are 4.5 mil people at driving age, and 98% households have at least one motorcycle (Statistical Office in Ho Chi Minh, 2005, HCMC Department of Transport, 2007b) Therefore, motorcycle now is a dominant mode carrying nearly 90% of all trips Private cars, buses of all kinds, and taxis account for approximately 2.3, 6%, and 2 %, respectively (HCMC Department of Transport, 2007a) Until now, motorcycle was preferred possibly because of their low price and the flexibility to swerve within crowed traffic

However, motorcycles may interfere with other modes, especially the buses and could make the traffic more likely congested due to their disordered behavior

Use of motorcycles has increased very fast in recent years, from 2.3 mil motorcycles

in 2002 to more than 3.6 mil motorcycles in 2008 Motorcycle use seemed to reach its highest level, as 98% households and 80% people at driving ages in HCMC have motorcycle (Statistical Office in Ho Chi Minh, 2005; HCMC Department of Transport, 2007b) The consequence of uncontrolled use of motorcycles in HCMC is tremendous This can be seen from the observed travel speeds of vehicles on a corridor Figure 2.9 shows that the present average travel speed of motorcycles in this corridor is 16.52 km/h, a 33.9% drop from 25.0 km/h of 2002 Average travel speeds of cars and buses also reduced 26% and 39%, respectively compared to the observed values in 2002 This comparison indicates a large reduction in average travel speeds of all vehicles in this corridor within six years due to the unrestrained increase of private vehicle use Moreover, the severe imbalance in modal share between the motorcycle and public modes of transportation led to the situation that traffic intermodal conflicts and traffic congestion frequently occur in the current network of narrow roads

0.00 5.00 10.00 15.00 20.00 25.00 30.00

Motorcycle Car Bus

Fig 2.9: Average travel speeds during evening peak hour in 2002 and 2008 present Note: Both two data used probe vehicles running along Truong Chinh street The data in 2002 was taken from the dataset HOUTRANS project investigated in November 2002, the present data was from 10 motorcycle trips, 4 bus trips and 4 taxi trips

0 50,000

'90

'91

'88 '87 '86

'07 '06 '01

However, car is emerging as a mode that will contribute a large proportion in trip share as car ownership has been increasing at a high rate for some recent years Just after 2002, the year that urban structure was planned to change toward of expansion, car ownership tended to increase faster, as can be seen in Figure 2.10 Since then, the car fleet in this city keeps an average increase rate at more than 12% per year (HCMC Traffic Police Bureau, 2007), which is as high as the GDP growth rate This is in particular as the present poor infrastructure can not be built up at that fast rate Drawing a trend line of 4-wheel vehicle ownership as a function of GDP per capita using data of Bangkok and HCMC suggests that HCMC might follow the development seen in Bangkok in the 80s (see Figure 2.11 ) With an annual increase rate of 12% (the smallest increase rate within the last 3 years), GDP per capita of HCMC is expected to reach 4,600$US by 2015 Based on this assumption, it is predicted that 4-wheel vehicles ownership ratio in HCMC could be around 100 units per 1000 population in 2015 This estimation means that at that time, there would be approximately 0.85 million cars in this city which would probably make up a large proportion of modal share as motorcycle users shift to use car

Public transport

The situation of public transport in Ho Chi Minh City is also similar to other developing South East Asian cities as buses are the only public transport available The city’s bus fleet of currently 3208 vehicles is serving only 6% of the travel demand while its capacity is more than 5 times higher than that share Imbalance toward private mode use has progressively reduced the ease of people’s mobility, still

it seems that this threat has not been fully addressed

Before 2002, operation of public transport is insignificant with poor transit’s fleet comprising mostly para-trasit and few buses, therefore public transport at that time just accounted for around 2% of travel demand However, owing to the master plan built in 2002 which proposed a strategy to develop bus service, investment in buses has greatly increased, and a dense bus network has been developed that covers almost the whole city The result of this strategy has been an increase of around 4% in the ridership share of buses

Presently, the average speed of buses in dense traffic with many motorcycles is less than 14 km/h Without doubt, speed of buses would be significantly higher if they are not impeded by motorcycles The factor of low speed might largely contribute to make the quality of bus service bad as perceived by most people That might also be the reason why the occupancies of buses during peak hours are low On the contrary, the bus service in HCMC could response to a maximum of 30-40% of the travel demand Additionally, until 2020, bus was planned to be a main public transport mode beside rail which both could carry 50% trips These figures imply that it is possible to expect a larger share of bus in response to high travel demand in this city

Transport policy

While the traffic condition in HCMC becomes more and more serious due to the proliferation of private modes, the government seems to be perplexed with finding a solution The city government has made some efforts to implement remedial measures, such as applying regulatory restrictions or giving priority to buses, but these measures were largely ineffective In 2007, The “Plan to reduce traffic congestion” (HCMC Department of Transport, 2007a) implemented a series of measures including systematically implementing traffic management, strengthening enforcement, enhancing awareness of motorcycle users about obedience of traffic law, and improving the operation of public transport However, after six months of implementation, the plan was dismissed as figures showed no congestion alleviation

In October 2008, a new plan with objectives to reduce travel demand, to change travel modes, and to modify travel behavior was drafted, so this plan seems to be better than the previous one since it target at the root of the problem Still, the detailed and effective measures to reach these targets should be formulated, noted that psychological approach such as mobility management could be a potential measure

2.3.3 The seriousness of traffic condition in near future in Ho Chi Minh City as car use increases

As discussed above, the fact that car ownership has been increasing rapidly exhibits a risk of congestion to the present poor infrastructure It is predicted that number of cars would become very high within the next few years as income continues to increase And therefore, car use would probably make up a large proportion of trip share as a result of modal shift from motorcycle use to car use However, under such a risk, so far applying advanced measures to reduce private mode use has not yet received much attention and determination by the city’s governments, not only in HCMC but possibly also in many other Asian developing cities It is therefore essential to estimate the progress of how the traffic will change in short and long terms so that

travel demand policies as well as appropriate investments for the transport infrastructure could be made

It is therefore crucial to estimate the progress of how the traffic will change in short and long terms so that travel demand policies as well as appropriate investments in the transport infrastructure can be made In 2002, Japan International Cooperation Agencyand HCMC People Committee implemented the HOUTRANS for planning infrastructure for this city until 2020 In this project, macroscopic transport demand models were built based on investigations about the present travel demand and scenario analyses was carried out One scenario forecasted that if until 2020 public transport usage in HCMC could be increased by 50% while car and motorcycle usage could be controlled within 50% and 20% respectively, the average travel speed would nevertheless reduce to 13.3 km/h and the average V/C ratio (degree of saturation) would increase to 1.8 (Almec Corporation, 2004) Matsuhashi et al (2005) applied a micro simulation model to analyze different traffic scenarios on a four-lane urban road in HCMC With an input traffic volume of around 6,000 vehicles per direction per hour, the model predicted that average speed of vehicles on this street would reduce to ~23 km/h when car use increases from 4.2% to 40% However, in micro scale, the present traffic of the city needs to be looked into more carefully because the current observed travel speed of many roads having similar traffic characteristics with those in that study, i.e number of lanes, traffic volume, mode share, have dropped to much lower than what was predicted This might be due to the fact that the model by Matsuhashi et al (2005) just analyzed the isolated traffic at a short mid-block section

of the road but did not consider the effect of intersections on the traffic flow

The literature review shows that so far the consequences of uncontrolled increase of car use in HCMC have not been explicitly addresses As mentioned, there is a high possibility of increasing car usage in the near future of this city, thus its impacts on the traffic need be thoroughly studied for the sake of planning preventive measures Given this background, the objective of this study is to demonstrate the seriousness of the traffic situation when many motorcycles that occupy the current roads in HCMC change into cars, through scenario simulation of a typical corridor in HCMC In this study, we investigated the negative effects when motorcycle users shift to car use in the future and the need to change people’s behavior toward bus use to improve the traffic Based on the results of these analyses, implications to transport policies will

be given and these would be important for solving traffic congestion in HCMC