ANALYSIS OF INTERFACE BETWEEN BUS AND RAIL TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

Abstract

The alarming growth of urban centres. is .a well known global phenomenon and the only exception with India is the rate at which its cities':are 'growing in size. The rapid growth of population and number of vehicles have considerably deteriorated quality of life in four metropolitan cities. Among the four metropolitan cities Delhi has experienced fastest growth of population and vehicles resulting in traffic congestion on roads, high accident rate, excessive delays, environmental degradation .!;.!i't '1, !:•■ oft' . , and overall discomfort to the commuters. The population of Delhi was 93.7 lacs in 1991 which is likely to reach to the tune of 122 lacs by 2001. The motor vehicles in Delhi have increased from 2.43 lacsA in. 1970 :to, 19.92, lacs in 1991 and it is expected to reach to the tune of 44 lacs by the end of the century. The number of accidents are highest in Delhi among other metropolitan cities and on an average 5 persons are killed daily in road accidents in Delhi. For providing relief to the commuters in Delhi, it is urgently required to Make best possible use of transit resources by providing adequate interface of Ring Railway with urban bus system. Each interface terminals should have efficient interchange facilities like Park-n-Ride and Kiss-n-Ride facilities. The rail and bus system should have common ticketing facility. The main factors influencing the design of any interface terminal are the volume of commuters and various modes. So the present study is aimed at demand assessment and policy evaluation for the interface facilities. In the present study, a stated preference questionnaire was designed for field study programme and face- to- face interviews of commuters in Delhi were conducted on some selected bus routes and locations. Only those commuters who exercise choice .between Ring Railway and bus were picked up for interviews. Among iv the 109 commuters interviewed 54 were bus commuters. It was observed that the potential users of public transport were from income group Rs 2000-4000 (44.9%) and Rs 4000-6000 (32.6%). Most of the trips in Delhi lie in 5-10 km (24.8%) and 10-15km (28.4%) range. It was also observed that most of the commuters below income group Rs 6000 spend nearly 10% of their income only on commuting. The share of work trip was found to be prominent (81.7%) among other trips. The commuters below income group Rs 2000 were found to be reluctant to switch over to improved Ring Railway showing' the constraints of low income and it was found that all the commuters in income group above Rs 6000 are willing to switch-over. The commuters of low income group were found to be insensitive to the reduction in their in-vehicle-travel time (IVTT) and out-of-vehicle travel time (OVTT) while upper income groups were highly sensitive towards saving in time. The stated preference information was modelled using BLOGIT software to develop binary logit models to analyse the commuters response to the interface parameters between rail and road based system. A total of 15 mode choice models were calibrated for 15 different segments of the commuters. All the models were found to be statistically sound and capable of making accurate predictions. The sensitivity analysis was carried out for predicting the revised patronage of improved Ring Railway based on incremental logit concept. The results were presented in 16 figures and each figure having eight curves for different COST, IVTT and OVTT variations. Thus, the major outcome of this study is that these models and curves can be used for predicting the demand for an innovative mode. i.e. improved Ring Railway in a well developed interface system.