Private car travel characteristics and influencing factors in Chinese cities - A case study of Guangzhou in Guangdong, China

Abstract

Taking Guangzhou as a case, this paper adopted a questionnaire survey to gather first-hand data and analyzed the characteristics and influencing factors of private car travel in Chinese cities. As the research indicated, trip purposes of private car travel are mainly commute and business affairs with a more flexible trip in the urban core area. And trip intensities are concentrated in a certain extent, with trip frequency being lower in the urban core area than the peripheral area. In addition, the trip time has two significant peaks occurring in the morning and afternoon, and one trough in the midday. And trip spatial distribution is mainly within commute with both residence and employment in urban area and inward commute with residence in suburban area while employment in urban area. Both kinds of commutes direct to the urban area. The study also shows that the characteristics of private car travel are principally influenced by two aspects: travelers' attributes and urban characteristics. The main travelers' social and economic attributes influenced it include the gender, education attainment, age, driving experience and per capita monthly household income. The urban characteristics influenced it mainly cover the land use pattern, public traffic facilities and spatial attributes of residential environment.