Date of Publication :7th December 2023

Abstract: Building a generalized rural travel demand perspective helps create policies that better address rural mobility and inclusive national development. However, studies on rural transport planning are limited which builds a gap in understanding trip behavior in rural areas. Therefore, this study was conducted to investigate the trip characteristics of rural households in a remote community. This study specifically aimed to collect socio-economic, and demographic information of rural households in Davao City through a household survey and develop a trip generation modelling to describe the relationship between these factors with trip frequency. Hence, a trip diary consisting of trip frequency, trip purpose, and mode choice information was required. The data revealed that the average household size is 3.96 which is mostly composed of extended family members, students, and working members. This signifies school and work as the primary purpose of trips on a typical day in the rural community. Further, different income classes were compared according to each trip characteristics. Results showed that, regardless of income class, most households own at least one motorcycle due to insufficient inaccessibility and poor road infrastructure. Walking was reported to be one of the preferred mode choices in addition to public utility vehicles, especially for low-income class and middle-income class households located in an inaccessible and remote portion of the community. Finally, an Artificial Neural Network was structured to investigate correlations between socio-economic and demographic factors with trip frequency, which revealed that household size, number of students, number of workers, and number of members between 7 and 59 years old showed strong positive correlations. In conclusion, it is no doubt that public transportation has become the preferred mode choice for rural residents. It is therefore important for the government to improve transportation facilities and include rural communities in policymaking to accommodate transport demand.

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