Distance-decay functions of travel to work trips in India

In 2011, for the first time, Census in India reported travel distance and mode of travel for the workers. The distance reported is in the form of aggregate counts for each mode of travel in 7 distance bins (0–1 km, 2–5 km, 6–10 km, 11–20 km, 21–30 km, 31–50 km, and >50 km). In this data article, methods are described to model categorical count data as distance-decay functions using continuous probability distributions. The distributions have been developed for 8 categories of modes—walk, cycle, motorised two-wheelers, car, tempo/auto rickshaw/taxi, bus, train, and all modes combined, for the 33 mainland states of India and all states combined. Distance for walk is modelled using exponential distribution, and for all the other modes using lognormal or Weibull distribution. For estimating parameters of the distributions, chi-square minimization has been used in a spreadsheet program. The data presented includes parameters of the 272 (34 × 8) probability distributions as well as descriptive statistics of these distributions.