Analyzing the relationships between travel mode indicators and the number of passenger transport fatalities at the city level

ABSTRACT

Objective: A number of efforts have been conducted on travel behavior and transport fatalities at the neighborhood or street level, and they have identified different factors such as roadway characteristics, personal indicators, and design indicators related to transport safety. However, only a limited number of studies have considered the relationship between travel behavior indicators and the number of transport fatalities at the city level. Therefore, this study explores this relationship and how to fill the mentioned gap in current knowledge.

Method: A generalized linear model (GLM) estimates the relationships between different travel mode indicators (e.g., length of motorway per inhabitants, number of motorcycles per inhabitant, percentage of daily trips on foot and by bicycle, percentage of daily trips by public transport) and the number of passenger transport fatalities. Because this city-level model is developed using data sets from different cities all over the world, the impacts of gross domestic product (GDP) are also included in the model.

Conclusions: Overall, the results imply that the percentage of daily trips by public transport, the percentage of daily trips on foot and by bicycle, and the GDP per inhabitant have negative relationships with the number of passenger transport fatalities, whereas motorway length and the number of motorcycles have positive relationships with the number of passenger transport fatalities.

KEYWORDS:

• transport safety
• traffic fatality
• travel behavior
• city level
• generalized linear model
• urban travel modes

Acknowledgments

The authors thank all of those who have supported this research for their useful comments during its completion. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Research Management Centre (RMC) and Centre for Innovative Planning and Development (CIPD).