PLANNING OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM FOR DEHRADUN

Abstract

Growing chronic traffic congestion, with increase in number of vehicular traffic which results in problems of environmental damage, enormous economic losses, more use of energy and road accidents are main reasons for many cities worldwide to consider new initiatives in public transport systems. Public transport system plays a vital role by providing cost effective and energy saving means of transport. There are a variety of possible systems for a new public transport system such as suburban rail, metro, light rail, improved bus services, bus ways, guided buses and so on, or some combination of these. Dehradun is the fastest growing city of Uttranchal had a population of 5.28 lakh as per 2001 census and it needs the immediate requirement of efficient Public transport system. In the present study, a stated preference questionnaire was designed for field study programme and face-to-face interviews of commuters in Dehradun were conducted on some selected bus routes and locations. A total of 120 samples were collected in the survey exclusive of pilot survey. It was observed from the survey that there is only 38.33% of commuters were captive to Public Transport mode and there is a high vehicle ownership, which indicating the lack of good public transport system. In this survey, an attempt has been made to assess the switch over behaviour of commuters from personalised vehicles to new innovative mode of transport as Bus Rapid Transit System. The stated preference questionnaire was designed on four set of choice levels by varying different attributes such as COST, IVTT and OVTT for different mode users and these data was modelled using binary logistic regression for calibration and MS-EXCEL software was used for regression analysis i.e. for determining the regression coefficients. The sensitivity analysis was carried out for predicting revised probability of Bus Rapid Transit System based on incremental logit concept as a part of application.