Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 7, 2009 Segmentation of Factors Influencing Car and Motorcycle Users in Klang Valley Jen Sim HO Ahmad Shukri YAHAYA Graduate Student Associate Professor School of Civil Engineering School of Civil Engineering Universiti Sains Malaysia Universiti Sains Malaysia Kampus Kejuruteraan Kampus Kejuruteraan Seri Ampangan, Seri Ampangan, 14300 Nibong Tebal 14300 Nibong Tebal Seberang Perai Selatan, Pulau Pinang Seberang Perai Selatan, Pulau Pinang Malaysia Malaysia Fax: +604-5941009 Fax: +604-5941009 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Ahmad Farhan SADULLAH Lee Vien LEONG Professor Senior Lecturer School of Civil Engineering School of Civil Engineering Universiti Sains Malaysia Universiti Sains Malaysia Kampus Kejuruteraan Kampus Kejuruteraan Seri Ampangan, Seri Ampangan, 14300 Nibong Tebal 14300 Nibong Tebal Seberang Perai Selatan, Pulau Pinang Seberang Perai Selatan, Pulau Pinang Malaysia Malaysia Fax: +604-5941009 Fax: +604-5941009 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: Inefficient of public transportation system has contributed to a high number of private vehicles on the major roads in Malaysia. It has been recorded that there are about 10 million motorcycles and cars on the roads. Excessive private vehicles have created problems in traffic management and safety related issues. This study is to examine the characteristics of motorcyclists and car users in Klang Valley. The characteristics of concern cover three main sections: socio economic background, trip patterns and factors influencing their mode choice. The information was collected through random interview survey at selected locations. Factor analysis was employed to reduce the service attributes in order to provide some insights into their preferences in mode choice. The findings illustrated in this paper may help prescribe recommendations for future transportation systems. Key Words: inefficient public transport system, motorists, mode choice preference 1. INTRODUCTION Klang Valley is an area in Malaysia encompassing Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia and its conurbation (refer Figure 1). Within Klang Valley, there are altogether 5 districts namely Gombak District, Hulu Langat District, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Klang District and Petaling District. The whole Klang Valley spans across an area of 2,843 square kilometres. Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 7, 2009 Figure 1 Kuala Lumpur and its conurbation (Source: KL Structure Plan 2020) Being one of the direct recipients of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Kuala Lumpur experienced tremendous economic and development growth with the average GDP growth rates ranging from 7% to 12% from 1986 – 1991(Mohamad and Kiggundu, 2007). The rapid development has instigated an exodus of people from other states of Malaysia as well as foreign immigrants to the city for employment opportunities. In 2000, Kuala Lumpur has recorded the highest population density with 1.42 million people which account for 35% of the total population in Klang valley. Increased of household income and spatial mismatch between work place and residential area has led to the high dependency on private vehicles. Few studies have been conducted to investigate the factors affecting the mode choice preferences in Malaysia. Results by Mohamad and Kiggundu (2007) showed that apart from income factor, the provision of various motor assembly facilities and involvement of Malaysia into automobile manufacturing also contributed to the rapid growth of private vehicles. Kamba et al. (2007) have conducted a study on mode choice behaviour among the travellers in Klang Valley and the findings showed that poor public transport services such as unreliable, delay, inconvenience and uncomfortable significantly led to the excessive private vehicles ownership. A study conducted by Abdul Kadir et al. (2006) to examine the factors influencing mode choice between motorcycle and bus revealed that travel time, cost of owning and operating as well as manoeuvring advantages played an important role in the decision of choosing between motorcycle and bus. Leong and Ahmad (2007) pointed out that number of household driving license holders has influence on the motorcycles ownership. Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 7, 2009 Figure 2 presents the number of new vehicles registered from 1996-2007. Motorcycles and cars registration recorded about 80%-90% of the total registration of which car and motorcycle sharing are approximately equal. Figure 2 Statistics of new vehicles registration in Malaysia between 1996 – 2007 (Source: Road Transport Department) According to a recent study initiated by Syarikat Prasarana Nasional Bhd (SPNB) (The Star, 2006), there were 2.2 million private vehicles moving into the city daily. The excessive influx of private vehicles into Klang Valley have triggered concerns on the associated adverse impacts such as traffic congestion, air pollution that creates considerable pressure on the road network systems. It was estimated that 80 percent of the pollutants came from motor vehicle sources (Yahya and Sadullah, 2002). The traffic congestion conditions in the city centre have continued to deteriorate. Travel speeds on major routes in Klang Valley were about 10 km/hr to 35 km/hr during morning peak (Mohamad and Kiggundu, 2007). In terms of traffic fatalities, it was recorded that there were about 4.3 accident fatalities case for every 10, 000 registered vehicles (Marjan et al., 2007). Motorcycle fatalities alone have recorded about 45% of the total fatalities in year 2000 (Ng et al., 2004). This is the reason why motorcycle related accidents are always given top priority in planning. The high motorization movement in town has drawn attention from government. Numerous efforts have been taken to solve the problem. Measures include provision of missing links, new highways, and improving public transport facilities. However, due to the excessive pressures on the roads, the public transport services were also affected. This has exacerbated the traffic congestion problems in the cities as people refuse to use unreliable public transport services and depend heavily on private vehicles. This study is to investigate the influencing factors on car and motorcycle use in Klang Valley. A list of attributes was identified from the previous studies and literature survey. The findings from this study will be very useful to effective road infrastructure design and sustainable transportation policy as the needs for these two modes were addressed. Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 7, 2009 2. DATA SOURCES This study was conducted in Klang Valley in May 2007 which involved personal interview survey. The target respondents were car users and motorcyclists and were randomly selected at the designated petrol stations and hypermarket parking lots. A total of 700 samples were collected. Of which, about 10% were excluded due to incompleteness. The reasons for incompleteness of the survey forms include the reluctance of respondents to answer several personal questions and the limited time they could spend to answer the survey. Of the remaining samples (639 samples), 23% were motorcyclists. The questionnaire was designed in three sections to gather the information on the private vehicle users’ characteristics and factors influencing their mode choice. The respondents were required to provide details such as monthly expenses, distance travelled and time taken to reach destination. In the last section, a set of 13 factors which were likely to influence the choice between motorcycle and car were identified and the degree of influence was measured on the five-point Likert scale ranging from 1= “Very Not Important” to 5 = “Very Important”. A sample of interview is included in the appendix. 3. ANALYSIS APPROACH Statistical procedures were employed to examine the characteristics of car users and motorcyclists. Firstly, principal component analysis with VARIMAX rotation was used to summarize the service attributes. The use of factor analysis is to identify the observed latent variables and reduce them into sub-groups based upon the interrelationship between the variables. Correlation tests were then applied on the service attributes to evaluate the strength of relationship among attributes. Number of factors extracted was based on the most frequent Latent Root Criterion that is the eigen value of each factor. For this study, a factor was included if the eigen value is greater than 1. Attributes were retained in the final result if the factor loading exceeds 0.5. Lastly, t-test and ANOVA test were performed to understand how the service attributes relate to the socioeconomic background of both private vehicle user groups. 4. RESULTS Table 1 presents the characteristics of the respondents in terms of gender and education level. In general, there were more male motorcyclists compared to female which is consistent with the phenomenon in Malaysia. Most of the car users were of those with higher education qualification. Descriptive statistics for each car users and motorcyclists were presented in Table 2. As expected, travel time factor was seen very important to both of the motorists. The mean of safety factor for car users was 4.40 while the average score for motorcyclists was lesser at 3.99. Proceedings of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Vol. 7,