Heavy duty diesel vehicles emit 15 to 20 times more particles when compared to light-dutyvehicles. Intra-city buses in India adds to poor air quality due to obsolete technology, poormaintenance and overloading. However, operational characteristics of intra-city buses aredifferent from other heavy vehicles. Therefore, generic Driving Cycles may not be relevant tobuses. In this context, the paper throws some insight in to the driving characteristics of city busesusing Global Positioning System (GPS) data.The average speed and running speed of urban buses were 11-17 km/hr and 20-23 km/hrrespectively during different time period. Irrespective of road type, higher percentage of timewas spent at idle mode mainly due to alighting and boarding of passengers at regular intervalsand fixed delay caused by traffic lights. A comparison between Chennai driving characteristics,Central Business District Cycle (CBDC), Dutch Urban Bus Drive Cycle (DUBC), De Lijn,Indian Driving Cycle and Delhi Bus Driving Cycle (DBDC) has been made in this study. Thecomparison has revealed that the road and traffic characteristics of Chennai were poor. TheStudy concluded with few recommendations to make the intra-city bus transport system moreefficient.
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