How sustainable is the growth of mass transit system in developing countries - An Indian perspective

In the modern urban world, transport researchers and policy makers are vehemently emphasizing the use of mass transit modes, primarily due to their distinct advantage in achieving congestion reduction, and for being environment friendly. In order to achieve high mass transit ridership, it is necessary to attract people to such modes so as to make them appealing and attractive when compared to personal motorized modes of transport. At the same time, it is also vital to assess different mass transit improvement alternatives and adopt a policy that leads to the sustainable development. India is currently witnessing a proliferation of new urban mass rapid transit systems, even in non-metropolitan areas. These are expensive to build and often do not realize their full potential even after decades of operations. This begs the question - can operational service quality improvement alternatives of existing public transit, provide users with benefits, comparable to a new mass rapid transit system? This paper evaluates the probability of modal shift to bus mode from non-mass transit modes on introduction of different service improvement measures applicable to Indian context. A multinomial logit mode choice model was developed based on a revealed preference dataset consisting of users' travel behavior in existing traffic scenario where three mass transit modes - suburban rail, subway/ metro rail & bus, as well as the intermediate public transit mode of auto-rickshaw, where available. The model is used to predict impacts of three major policies - (1) existing network improvement, (2) lane management and (3) introduction of bus rapid transit system in terms of level of service improvements of bus transit and bus transit mode share. Results show that improvement in existing bus transit is more beneficial compared to lane management strategy and even comparable to bus rapid transit system considering the cost and time budget which may be used as a policy making tool by authorities for future city planning.