BENCHMARKING SERVICE LEVEL FOR PUBLIC TRANSPORT OPERATION IN A CITY

Abstract

The growth in population is one of the important factor which is resulting in the problems related to urban transport congestion, which in turn leading to immense losses in travel time. Benchrnarking is an important mechanism for introducing the accountability in service delivery. Benchmarking provides a minimum common framework for monitoring and reporting on service level, and it also provides a guideline on how to operationalize this framework. Service level performance benchmarks have been identified for the different areas, such as Public Transport in a city , Pedestrian Infrastructure facilities , Non Motorized Transport facilities , Usage of Integrated Transport System facilities , Road Safety etc. Level of service have been classified in basically four levels with level I is the best, following by 2, 3, and so on. The overall focus of the work on "benchmarking" is centred on comparing the relative efficiency of modes, modal combinations and modal interfaces. The issue of identifying appropriate benchmarks that could be applied to assess the relative efficiency of transport chains was investigated by the Intermodal Freight Transport Advisory Group, which was established by the Steering Committee for the Programme of Research on Road Transport and Intermodal Linkages (RTR) in 1998. This present report provides a detailed review of needs of benchmarking, its objective, and standardization of benchmark level. Various studies conducted in India and abroad are discussed and presented.