Macro-level Transport Modal Split Model: Theory and Application in China

Proper modelling of transport has become more important to formulate the necessary infrastructure construction and potential energy consumption and oil security, pollution and GHGs issue under the background of transport activity increase in the entire world, especially the fast-developing China. In this paper, A national level modal split model are developed based upon the strong evidence that travelers have two explicit and separate travel budgets, i.e. money and time budget. And it was formulated to consider the competitive characteristics among modes and making cost and speed as the driving force and critical parameter, finally the travel money and time budget close the whole system. Also the model considered the long- and short-distance transport separately based on their difference in optional choice and elasticity to socioeconomics variables. In the China case, the stability of TTB and the trend of TMB are verified by the empirical results. After that the differentiation between urban and rural people was also underlined, and finally they are aggregated into the national level results. With reasonable assumption on the split of budget, a non-linear programming are developed with Matlab and the solution are interpreted and calibration to the past years, 1995-2001. The result shows that the motorized rate in intracity transport will have a huge growth in the next 30 years and the substitution of railway and bus by car and aircraft will occur in the intercity transport. And the same, the truck will trade off the share of railway in freight also. This kind of national-level transport modal split model can be feed into some technology model to simulate the energy consumption and related emission