Impact assessment of satellite centre-based telecommuting on travel and air quality in developing countries by exploring the link between travel behaviour and urban form

Lack of coordination between transport and land use in developing countries creates a variety of complications in the urban form. Due to this mismatch, vehicle ownership is uncontrollably rising, generating hyper-congestion on the road network. Suburban sprawling is one of the adverse outcomes of the transport–land use mismatch, which increases trip lengths and thereby supports traffic gridlocks in the urban areas. This paper proposes a satellite centre-based telecommuting as a solution for easing congestion in developing countries by exploring the link between travel behaviour and urban form. The investigation is conducted in two stages. In the first stage, the household travel behaviour in developing countries is analysed by using a nested logit (NL) model of two levels. The upper level is characterized by car-owning, motorcycle owning and no vehicle-owning choices. The lower level consists of household related travel choices. In the second stage, the developed NL model is applied for a telecommuting policy by locating new satellite centres outside the CBD. The satellite locations are chosen considering the travel convenience, urban form and the existing road network. The impacts of the policy are assessed in terms of vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT) and emissions considering Bangkok Metropolitan Region as a case study.