DESIGN OF FEEDER ROUTES FOR INTEGRATED OPERATION OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT SYSTEM IN DELHI

Abstract

Transportation demand in urban areas continues to increase rapidly as a result of both population growth and changes in land use patterns. A road based bus system offers an opportunity for creating a system capable of meeting multiple needs of users and operators. Many people use public transport systems to reach their destination, while others use personal vehicles. Inefficient public transport systems do not attract ridership. To provide comfortable and well accessible public transport facility, there is a need for the mass transit system to be implemented in proper coordination with integrated feeder system. The present study discusses a methodology to develop an optimal feeder bus route system, within the framework of integrated mass transit planning of Delhi. Delhi, the capital of India and one of the largest and most crowded city in the world is taken as the study area. Coordinated feeder routes are planned for Pitampura metro station on Shandara-Rithala metro corridor in the Delhi metro system. Feeder routes are selected between proposed metro station and potential destinations within the identified study area. As per the optimum route cost analysis the feeder routes are to be selected among the existing bus routes within the study area and for the determination of headways of different routes the optimum generalized costs (user cost and operator cost) are found out. The optimum bus stop spacings of feeder routes are also proposed. VISSIM is used to run the simulation of feeder buses on the feeder routes which have been designed and corresponding travel times are been found out. Thus the coordinated mass transit and feeder transit system reduces the overburden pressure on the existing public transit facility and will be able to provide an efficient commuter friendly transportation service.