AbstractsTransportation

The majority of the existing transportation literature has been concerned with private travel activities. Fortunately, the importance of commercial vehicles and their movement has led to a surge of research activities to analyze and understand commercial vehicle movements. However, an absent theme in the emerging research activities is the process governing commercial vehicle ownership. This project attempts to fill the gap in the existing literature by developing a new model of commercial vehicle ownership. The focus is on studying the spatial prevalence of the various types of commercial vehicles, as derived from the Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) classes, in a given traffic analysis zone (TAZ) within an urban area using various types of statistical methods. The results allow us to unravel the significant factors explaining the variability in the spatial distribution of commercial vehicles. The obtained statistical results form the basis for developing predictive urban commercial vehicle ownership location models. Advisors/Committee Members: Maoh, Hanna.