A Study of Fuel Price Increase and Its Influence on Selection of Mode of Transports

The sudden increase in the use of private vehicles contributed to the increase in traffic congestion, road accidents and pollution. The rise in ownership of private vehicles is caused by, among others, the problem of public transports being unable to fulfil the public’s needs. This made the commuters prefer to use their own vehicles rather than public transports. Based on this scenario, a study has been conducted particularly in UKM (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia), to study the factors that can diminish the problem of traffic congestion. The main objective of this study is to form a model of shifts of transportation modes from private vehicles to public transports (buses) based on the ‘fuel price increase’ factor (Malaysian Ringgit) to see the change in vehicle preference. This study has succesfully produced a model that relates the fuel price to modes of transportation shift by obtaining a correlation exceeding 0.9. The test of sensitivity for the model showed that the rate of fuel price hike influenced at least 88% of private vehicle users to shift to public transports if the fuel price reached RM2.75. From this study, it can also be concluded that the effects of fuel price increase influenced the shift of preference from private to public transports with the types of vehicles and the rate of price increase as variables.