| Since the 1960s, inter-city travel in the United States has been dominated by the automobile. Air service ranks second and buses serve a very small percentage of total trips, but are important as an alternative to cars in low-density corridors serving rural communities and small cities. Trains also capture a relatively small portion of trips specifically in the higher-density corridors.;A basic solution to the inter-city travel problems seems to lie in an intermodal approach and within this approach, selection of the most effective and service maximizing mode. The question is how to come to grips with different modes? One way to approach the answer to this question is by applying a split idea concept. Planners need to consider the major transportation modes (automobile, air service, bus service, rail, high speed train) in general and apply the split idea notion to air and high speed train and find a set of criteria to evaluate the two systems.;Comparisons of transit modes and technologies based upon cost factors alone are usually misleading because the services provided by each mode may be quite different. Most of the feasibility studies done to evaluate a new intercity transportation system and compare it with an existing system base their conclusions mainly on a cost benefit analysis. Hence, there is definitely a need for an enhanced evaluation methodology to analyze a corridor based on other variables as well.;In this research, the concept and importance of an enhanced evaluation methodology has been investigated and utility and Logit mode choice models, expert system, and statistical experimentation techniques have been applied to establish the importance of different attributes and comparison of inter-city travel modes. The Houston-Dallas air corridor has been analyzed as a case in point. |
