Capacity Development for Sustainable Urban Transportation in Developing Countries <Article>

To make urban transport sustainable, effective and efficient, first and foremost, there is a need for capacity development-capacity is defined as the ability to deal with problems in efficient and effective ways-in developing countries. Apart from many important capacity related problems such as lack of adequate infrastructure, older vehicle population, etc., policy makers in developing countries have to consider changing individual behavior to realize sustainable urban transportation policies. Assuming individual capacity as the effect of attitudes-personal ideas and opinions-on the travel behavior, we incorporate individual capacity into a travel demand model-Bivariate Binary Probit model of private car ownership and its use for commute trip. To do so, we make use of three individual capacity related factor variables, i.e., Factor 1: transport sensitive, Factor 2: attentive citizen, Factor 3: selective citizen, obtained by Factor analytic methods from thirteen attitudinal variables-individual importance ratings on general and transportation related issues. Underlying variables for both transport sensitive and attentive citizens receive positive weights from their respective factor variables; for selective citizens, five out of nine underlying variables received negative factor weights. We find significant effects of individual capacity on private car ownership and its usage for commute trips. However, the results are mixed for sustainable urban transportation policies. Transport sensitive and selective citizens are more inclined to own private cars, and use them (at least) for commute trips; only attentive citizens are found to have negative effects on both. These results are further discussed within the context of persuasive communication for capacity development in urban transportation.