Introduction of public bus transit in Indian cities

Introducing public bus transit system in Indian cities raises many challenging issues of different nature ranging from technical to operational. The present study examines the impact of a new public bus transit system by applying a binary logit analysis for assessing the possible variation in modal shift behavior. The case study of mode-choice was developed, calibrated, and validated using socio-economic data collected on six proposed corridors in the city of Bardoli, Gujarat, India. Traffic quality parameters, such as average speed, delay, congestion, travel time, and travel cost were modeled to investigate the impact of the new bus transit system in VISSIM environment. The probability of an overall modal shift to proposed bus transit system corridors ranges from 45% to 51%. The maximum modal shift ranges from 80.58% to 87.40% for three-wheelers (para-transit) followed by bicycle and walking mode. However, cars have the least modal shift ranging from 6.78% to 11.49% and 37.38% to 45.46% for two-wheelers. The average speed of the bus transit system in both directions could reach 47.75–49.59 kmph with 15 min frequency. Likewise, mean travel time was estimated from 1.3 to 1.6 min per km and average commuter cost of less than Rs. 1.0 per km for bus transit with insignificant delay and congestion. Introduction of the new public bus system shows promising results and has to play a significant role in developing a sustainable urban public transportation system. These findings can be used to form the basis for the implementation of the new public bus transit in peer cities with relatively similar sizes, which may impact an inhabitant sustainable choice on ridership in due course.