Browsing by Author "Herath, PMGDM"

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    Assessment of pedestrian facilities in Kandy world heritage city from the perspective of tourists
    (Sri Lanka Society of Transport and Logistics, 2023-08-26) Wijesinghe, MDCL; Herath, PMGDM; Arafan, SA; Gunaruwan, TL
    Tourists attract more towards world heritage cities recently. Kandy, Sri Lanka is one such heritage tourist destination. Sri Dalada Maligawa, where the Tooth Relic of Lord Buddha is placed in the heart of Kandy City. Besides, many historical other shrines of different religions and Royal Botanical garden is located in the vicinity of Kandy. Tourists are more cautious about the pedestrian facilities in downtown areas. It is observed that pedestrian facilities are in poor condition in some of streets in Kandy CBD. Properly designed walkaways attract more tourists and indirectly increase the image of the city. Continuous walkways with guard rails, waiting areas with seating facilities, walkways with free of obstacles, proper widths of walkways improve the pedestrian facilities. Conjoint Analysis (CA) is a multivariate technique used to understand how respondents develop preferences for products or services. Current research exemplifies the effectiveness of conjoint analysis in evaluating the most influencing attributes in classification of sidewalks. Sidewalk width, guard rails covering the sidewalks, obstacles, and seating facilities are recognized as highly contributed attributes for pedestrian facilities. Total Utility Value is calculated for selected places by using part-worth utility values of each level of attributes according to results of CA. Pedestrian Preference Score also will be used to achieve better outcomes from this research. Results of CA and PPS results are used to develop a Pedestrian Condition Index (PCI) to assist the pedestrian facilities in this research.
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    Mode choice behavior of commuters in Kandy, Sri Lanka
    (Sri Lanka Society of Transport and Logistics, 2023-08-26) Herath, PMGDM; Dharmarathna, WRSS; Wickramasinghe, V; Gunaruwan, TL
    Public transport mode share is the key contributory factor for the efficiency of an urban transportation system. However, commuters tend to shift from public transport modes to private modes due to various reasons. This causes an increase in traffic congestion in the road network resulting in a huge economic loss and environmental pollution. With the aim of providing a productive solution for these problems, this study is set to examine the factors that affect transport mode choice. Online and face-to-face interviews are carried out in Kandy district, Sri Lanka by using a structured questionnaire to obtain the mode choices of commuters and used to estimate the travel behaviour parameters in the multinomial logit (MNL) model. The respective coding was done in the RStudio platform, and the parameters were estimated based on the utility maximization theory. Adjusted likelihood ratio index, t-statistics and the respective sign of parameters are used to show the model accuracy. The outcome of the analysis shows that travel time, access time, waiting time, egress time and travel cost are the significant factors affecting the mode choice behaviour of commuters. All the parameters are obtained with a negative sign which implies that increasing the value of each parameter decreases the likelihood of choosing the relevant mode. The results of the scrutinized cross-sectional analysis and the estimated parameters suggest appropriate recommendations which can be used to improve the quality of local transportation planning.