A Study on the Transportation Mode Choice Behaviour of Individuals With Different Socio-Economic Status

This chapter presents a study on the transportation mode choice behaviour of individuals with different socio-economic status. A previously developed system dynamics model has been adopted by differentiating the population mass into upper, middle, and lower classes. The simulation experiments with the model revealed that generally the upper class individuals would be more inclined to use a private car (PC) instead of public transportation (PT) when their tendency is compared to middle and lower class individuals. It was also observed that lower class individuals would be more willing to use PT instead of PC when their tendency is compared to middle and upper class individuals. As such, it would be difficult to encourage the upper class individuals to use PT instead of PC, and it would be successively easier to do so in the case of middle and lower class individuals. However, the results also indicated that under certain different circumstances, the upper class individuals would also prefer to go for PT, and the lower class ones could prefer to own and use PC instead of PT.