A STUDY ON MULTIMODAL TRANSPORT SYSTEM FOR DELHI

Abstract

The urban transport demand has been growing at a rapid pace with the growth of technology, economic development and rising standard of living which has resulted in a phenomenal increase in transportation activities in terms of passenger movements. The existing transport infrastructure is inadequate to cope up with the growing demands of urban transport. Due to lack of good public transport system, the vehicle ownership is on the increase which has aggravated the existing traffic problems in terms of increased traffic congestion, hazardous journey, environmental pollution and increased fuel consumption. In 1991 the 23 metropolices accounted for 32.5% of urban population. The growth of vehicles has been more than 5000% in the last 40 years whereas in the same period the road length has increased by only 4%. The transport demand in Delhi was 70 lakh passenger trips in 1981 which is estimated to be 169 lakh passenger trips in 2001 A.D. 30% of people in Delhi suffer from respiration disorders due to air pollution from vehicles and the fatality rate in accidents in Delhi is 5 persons/day. No single mode of transport can serve the purpose effectively, hence there is a need to coordinate various modes of transportation. This seems to be a viable solution and this forms the basis of multimodal transport system (MMTS). MMTS involves the coordination of private and public modes of transportation and also coordination within public transport modes. Hence, for the success of a multimodal transport system it is very necessary to ascertain the switch over from private mode to public mode. In the present study an attempt has been made to assess the switch over of commuters from personalised vehicles to improved rapid transit system (IRTS) i.e. improved ring railway. The study of station area development of ring railway has also been done. These form the vital inputs to the multimodal transport system. It was found from the study that there is a high vehicle ownership in Delhi (73.27%) indicating lack of public transport system. 64.71 % people use their own vehicle for shorter trip lengths and only 29.04% use it for trip length > 15 km. 77.78% people of high income group ( > Rs.15000/- pm) use personalised mode for work journey. A stated preference questionnaire was designed in , which six scenarios of improved ring railway in Delhi was presented to the commuters. These scenarios were developed by varying different attributes such as IVTT, wait time, walktime, parking charge and fare at two levels. LOGIT software has been used to develop logic models based on different segments. The sensitivity analysis has been carried out taking into account various policy options.