Communications - Scientific letters of the University of Zilina X:X | DOI: 10.26552/com.C.2026.018

Assessment of Vehicular Passenger Occupancy and Its Effect on Los

Rashmi Ranjan Samal¹, Kundan Samal ORCID...¹, Sitansu Kumar Das ORCID...², Satya Ranjan Samal ORCID...¹, Malaya Mohanty ORCID...^{1, *}

¹ Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) Deemed to be University, School of Civil Engineering, Bhubaneswar, India

² Government College of Engineering, Department of Civil Engineering, Keonjhar, India

The expansion of infrastructure in developing countries have led to a surge in car ownership. Although cars offer greater safety, their less passenger occupancy has contributed to reduced level of service (LOS). The present study was aimed to investigate the effect of passenger occupancy of various modes of transport on LOS. Detailed on-field surveys, including video recordings and questionnaires have been used to collect data, which is subsequently analyzed. The study findings suggest that a huge improvement in LOS and congestion can be achieved if public transportation is used more. Even usage of 3Ws and 2Ws can reduce congestion compared to usage of cars. While a person using a bus uses just 0.48 m2 of the road space, a person using car uses 2.23 m2 of the road space. The findings of this research are intended to inform traffic engineers and practitioners in developing more balanced traffic management strategies.

Keywords: Level of Service (LOS), congestion, passenger occupancy, vehicular occupancy, traffic engineering, transportation management

Grants and funding:

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Conflicts of interest:

The authors hereby declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Received: November 18, 2025; Accepted: March 9, 2026; Prepublished online: March 18, 2026