Graduation Year

2004

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.C.E.

Degree Granting Department

Civil Engineering

Major Professor

Ram M. Pendyala, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Steven E. Polzin, Ph.D., P.E.

Committee Member

Jian J. Lu, Ph.D., P.E.

Keywords

census tracts, work commute travel time, place of work, mode to work, peak period departure

Abstract

The need for a better understanding of journey to work behavior has never before been so important. Many transportation corridors are functioning at unacceptable levels of service and many at times to their capacity. This phenomenon is more pronounced during peak period when majority of the population is making their work trip. This research builds on the recent developments in structural equations modeling technique for identifying the socio-demographic influences on the commute behavior of the population in Florida.

Towards this purpose a series of five structural equations models are estimated using aggregate level data from Census 2000. Each of these models has a set of journey to work characteristics that are observed for their behavior against prevalent sociodemographic characteristics. The journey to work characteristics identified are exhaustively studied for various relationships to the socio-demographic characteristics.

The model estimation led to the identification of relations between various journey to work characteristics and the socio-demographic characteristics at the Census Tract level. Some of the results obtained supported other studies performed earlier. It is hoped that the findings of this research would broaden the horizon in understanding journey to work behavior of the population of Florida.

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