Redefining the Service Level Benchmarking for Public Transport System in India

摘要

Flourishing economy and rapid urbanization has made India witness a surge in travel demand and number of private vehicles. National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP) 2006, India adopted a statement "Moving People and not Vehicle," giving a clear preference to public transport. Thereafter, India witnessed an increase in numbers of cities where organized bus based public transport were available. To evaluate and benchmark the Urban Public Transport Services, an evaluation mechanism has been developed by Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), Government of India (Gol) based upon common benchmarking parameters, irrespective of the city characteristics, which means all the cities will be benchmarked on the same scale irrespective of its size, characteristics, and requirements. A need for "Re-defining the SLBs for Public Transport System in India" was felt, in light of commuter's perspective. In this regard, a study was done, where literature review was conducted to find out the performance parameters for evaluating public transport services. A scientific inquiry was made by user interview method to find out relation between the socio economic characteristic of the commuter (independent variable) and the importance score allotted by the commuter to the identified performance parameter (dependent variable). The study concluded that several socio economic characteristics have significant correlation with the parameters for evaluating public transport services. The study has a set of recommendations based upon the study finding and data analysis, so as to make service level benchmarking of public transport in India, more customized to the travel requirements of the Indian cities.