BUS ROUTE COST MODELLING

Abstract

Transportation costs have a prominent role in transportation planning. Transportation costs are conspicuous, Whether it is fare policy, subsidy policy or any other matter of planning. As depot forms the basic operating unit of State Transport Undertakings(STU), cost study at depot level is of vital importance. If the depot is considered as profit centre and efforts are made for its profitability, automatically the organisation (STU) will be in the green zone. In India not much work has been done to derive cost models at the micro-level (route cost). These are two basis approaches to develop a cost model viz. unit cost method and regression method. Both methods in different manners have been tried in the past. In this study these two basic approaches have been followed and finally two models have been developed viz. unit cost model and polynomial regression model based on bus-kms.las in dependent variable. Both models were tested at micro level (route wise) as well as at depot level as an effort to generalise the models. The scope of research in the field of transportation cost either at micro or macro level can't be denied. It is the field from where the STUs can have a direction to operate so that these STUs can move towcArds the economic recovery from the present economic red. Finally it is recommended that analytic optimisation models based upon operator cost as well as user cost should be developed and analysed for route planning.