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Purpose: The study evaluates the accident-adjusted dynamic efficiency of public bus operators providing bus transportation services in eight major metropolitan cities of India. Design/methodology/approach: The slack-based measure (SBM)–undesirable window analysis approach is used to gauge the dynamic efficiency levels and identify the sources of inefficiency in bus transportation services. This innovative approach integrates the SBM model developed by Tone (2001, 2004) and the window analysis approach of Charnes et al. (1985). The main advantage of this approach is that one can explicitly incorporate the number of accidents in the production technology specification as an undesirable (bad) output and potently handle the issue of the "curse of dimensionality" in a small sample like ours. Findings: The key empirical findings suggest wide variations in average efficiency levels across sample bus operators in metropolitan cities. The Chennai Transport Corporation is observed as the most efficient and consistent bus operator due to its most stable efficiency performance. The results additionally unveil that the role of managerial inefficiency was diminutive, and the scale-related issues were the real cause of sub-optimal or supra-optimal behaviour of sample bus operators in the resource-utilisation process. Practical implications: There is an urgent requirement for effective policy intercessions to mitigate the sizeable observed inefficiency in the production process and resolve scale-related issues of public bus operators offering transit services in major metropolitan cities of India. Originality/value: This paper is maybe the first to assess the dynamic efficiency of public bus transit systems in India's major metropolitan cities after treating accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effectiveness of the bus priority lane (BPL) for public transport buses in the city of Bengaluru in India. We use the travel times on the BPL corridor as a measure of the effectiveness of the BPL. We find that there is a significant improvement in the travel times after the introduction of the BPL; for the worst 10% of the travel times, we find an improvement between 4% and 28%. Our methodology involves extracting trips on the BPL and computing the travel times for these trips from a time series of GPS information. Our methodology is scalable and can be used to compute the travel times between any two given points in other similar studies. We supplement our results with a novel test (called the D-test) for comparing the levels of stressful driving in the following scenarios: (a) morning peak hours (IST 07:00 h to 11:00 h) versus evening peak hours (IST 17:00 h to 21:00 h), and (b) northward trips versus southward trips on the BPL. We are able to infer that the drivers are generally more stressed during the morning peak hours and during the southward trips on the BPL. Partitioning the BPL into segments, we show that a majority of the segments exhibit similar effectiveness and driver stress trends as the full BPL stretch. We anticipate that corrective measures for the betterment of travel times and driver stress levels (e.g., introducing additional buses subject to vehicle re-balancing constraints, carefully planning the bus schedules to regulate bus traffic throughout the day, etc.) in some segments can lead to further improvements in travel times and reduction in driver stress levels. • Implementation of the Bus Priority Lane can reduce travel times. • Segmented analysis helps identify traffic bottlenecks for targeted intervention. • Driver-stress hot-spots can be identified for targeted intervention. • A novel statistical test compares driving stress levels across a pair of routes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at analysing the utilisation of biodiesel for the case of bus rapid transit system (BRTS) in Ahmedabad, India, through the social benefit cost analysis (SBCA) and life cycle cost analysis (LCCA) tools. The SBCA and the LCCA have been performed for diesel and biodiesel blends B0, B5, B10, B15, B20, B30, B50 and B100. The study reveals that the overall social benefit cost ratio is close to 0.7 for diesel-based transit and can be marginally improved to 0.77 by adding biodiesel in various proportions. Given the easy transition of diesel-based transit to biodiesel-based transit coupled with improvement in benefit cost ratio, it is suggested to transition from diesel to biodiesel blended fuel. However, since the benefit cost ratio is less than 1.0, a need for alternative financial model development is identified. It is also deducted that the fuel conversion is one way to sustainable development, however, looking to the nature of social benefits; the step to development of BRTS instead of conventional bus transport can also aid sustainable development in a major way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to estimate the corridor capacity of a bus rapid transit (BRT) system by using a revised failure rate approach. The two important factors that influence capacity, which are explored in the present study, are the bus lost time and the failure rate. These factors, along with other factors, were estimated for stops of a selected corridor in the Ahmedabad Bus Rapid Transit System in India. The bus lost time, i.e., the time taken by the first passenger to board the bus, was used to estimate the dwell time and calculated using field data. However, the Transit Capacity and Quality Service Manual provides a default value of the bus lost time for a three- and four-berth stop. But unfortunately, no such value is available for a two-berth stop, and hence, it was estimated using bus stop videography data. Before applying the failure rate approach, it is important to note that, as per literature, two types of capacities are estimated for a transit system, i.e., the operational and maximum capacity. The former is calculated using the field estimated failure rate, whereas the latter is generally assessed using a maximum failure rate of 25% in the case of a conventional stop. Because the present study deals with the exclusive bus system, a maximum failure rate value for a two-berth BRT stop was computed as 29%. The bus stops in the present study were not overtaking stops; hence, the reduction in efficiency of the first birth due to the second berth being occupied was computed as 17%, and this value was estimated using trajectory plots. Based on the proposed methodology, the upstream and downstream capacity of the selected bus corridor was estimated at 136 and 137 buses=h, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports an investigation on the requirement of fare increment for achieving the operational viability of private buses in the context of an emerging country. Taking an existing route in Kolkata city which is served by private buses, several scenarios were investigated to achieve the viability of service through interventions in fare, design of service, and supply of buses. A simulation framework was used for the evaluation of various scenarios. The study brings out new evidences to question the conventional approach of increasing the bus fare to satisfy the operational viability. It is shown that the fare and the revenue requirements are distorted due to the oversupply of buses and non-optimal service. The analysis shows that even with the present fare, it is possible to resolve the viability issue by optimizing the service and supply. The results presented in the paper are case specific but are likely to encourage policy makers to carry out similar investigations in other cities in India as well as in other developing countries to improve urban bus service without putting an additional burden on the users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses a model for developing optimal feeder bus routes, within integrated mass transit planning framework, for urban rail transit stations. The model is a part of the methodology to develop an effective and efficient integrated urban mass transit system for a city which has a potential demand for a new rail-based mass transit system besides the street transit system and existing rail-based system (if any). In addition to the proposed model the methodology consists of rail transit corridor identification and integrated scheduling models, but they are not within the scope of this paper. The routes are generated in two levels; the first level generates the initial set of shortest paths (potential feeder routes) based on the maximum and minimum route length criteria, and in the second level, a search is made around these corridors by generating K shortest paths for each station-to-terminal node pair (potential feeder route) and using genetic algorithm to select one route combination out of all possible routing configurations. The feeder routes were developed for two different cases: Case 1 for selective search and Case 2 for open search, and the best results out of the two were adopted. Thane City, which is a part of Mumbai Metropolitan Region, India, is taken as the case study area. It was found that better results in terms of minimized objective function value were obtained for the open search case. The proposed model is able to develop optimal feeder routes, within integrated mass transit planning framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we model the bus networks of six major Indian cities as graphs in L-space, and evaluate their various statistical properties. While airline and railway networks have been extensively studied, a comprehensive study on the structure and growth of bus networks is lacking. In India, where bus transport plays an important role in day-to-day commutation, it is of significant interest to analyze its topological structure and answer basic questions on its evolution, growth, robustness and resiliency. Although the common feature of small-world property is observed, our analysis reveals a wide spectrum of network topologies arising due to significant variation in the degree-distribution patterns in the networks. We also observe that these networks although, robust and resilient to random attacks are particularly degree-sensitive. Unlike real-world networks, such as Internet, WWW and airline, that are virtual, bus networks are physically constrained. Our findings therefore, throw light on the evolution of such geographically and constrained networks that will help us in designing more efficient bus networks in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things is another worldview that joins different advancements to improve our lives. The fast development in the populace in India causes more swarming at public bus stations. The requirement for a productive public transportation framework, for example, transportation is quickly expanded because of the expanding population, the travellers need to realise the exact appearance season of the specific transport to specific stations and afterward plan their excursion from their home. Fuel checking has been the serious issue that the greater part of transport organisations hopes to address. To tackle this issue in a practical manner, we have built up an IoT based transport global positioning framework to show the ebb and flow area of the transport and seat accessibility in the showing up transports. The above system proposed has been approved utilizing Android in this examination which permits workers towards following transports and realizing the normal appearance time. Applications are worked by forming those administrations and conveying into administration stages dispersed and facilitated in the Cloud that awards secure admittance to the information shared by these gadgets in compliance. The framework has been effectively and progressively planned and executed so it tends to be facilitated and utilized by any organization without the need to make any significant adjustments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural feeder service between villages and bus stops is largely a missing component in developing countries such as India. Traditionally, planning of rural feeder service has been carried out without due consideration to indirect costs associated with hard factors (e.g., walking distance and waiting time) and soft factors (e.g., crowding inside vehicles) of the service. A case study is presented for the planning of rural feeder service with due consideration to direct and indirect costs to users and operational viability of the service. Direct and indirect costs to users are expressed in terms of a comprehensive measure called generalized cost (GC). GC is developed on the basis of the willingness to pay (WTP) of rural commuters with respect to various attributes of rural feeder service. The work demonstrates the effect of catchment characteristics (i.e., number of villages, size of villages, and spatial separation represented by road network connecting villages to bus stop) on feeder service attributes (i.e., type of vehicle, route, headway of service and fare). It is also shown that planning of feeder service could be instrumental in bringing benefits to rural communities. The results presented in the paper are case specific, but the methodology can be applied to the planning of feeder services in other rural regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exclusive bus lanes are intended to enhance the level of service of bus transport in terms of speed, reliability, safety, etc. This paper is concerned with application of a newly developed microsimulation technique to study the effect of provision of reserved bus lanes on the flow of nonlane-based heterogeneous traffic on urban roads in India. The aim of the study reported here is to modify and validate a newly developed simulation model of heterogeneous traffic flow using field observed data and to apply the validated model to study the effect of exclusive bus lanes on traffic flow. The effect is measured in terms of the reduction in the speeds of other categories of vehicles due to the possible reduction in the available road space for these vehicles. The results of the study indicate that it is possible to introduce exclusive bus lanes on carefully selected urban roads to enhance the level of service of bus, simultaneously ensuring a satisfactory level of service to the other vehicles on the road. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details the experiences of 12 American college students as they travel through India, Thailand and Taiwan studying Buddhism for a semester. The paper discusses their joys and frustrations as they search for spirituality and meaning in a bus marked “Tourist”. The students share their feelings about being tourists, contrasting their desires to have an academic and spiritual experience as they visit sacred sites working with local scholars and religious practitioners. They struggle with their privledge and express their shame at seeing the economic inconsistencies and disparities of locals. As the semester ends, the students become increasingly self-reflective, embodying humility and compassion. They are transformed as they see the contradictions of religion and culture. Implications for tourism management are offered, as well as an examination of the cross-cultural issues of being a Westerner on a guided spiritual quest in an Eastern setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the determinants of cost inefficiency of several publicly operated passenger-bus transportation companies in India in terms of their ownership structure as well as other firm specific characteristics, A panel data on publicly operated passenger-bus transportation companies is used to estimate a translog cost system with inefficiency. Inefficiency is specified in such a way that both its mean and variance are firm- and time-specific. For the estimation of production technology and cost inefficiency we have used a multi step estimation procedure instead of the single-step maximum likelihood (ML) method. In the first step we estimate the translog cost system with hetemskedastic cost function without using any distributional assumptions on the error terms. The second stage uses the ML method to estimate the parameters associated with inefficiency, conditional on the parameter estimates obtained from the first stage. Finally, the residual of the cost function is decomposed to obtain firm-and time-specific measures of cost inefficiency, with ownership type and other firm-specific characteristics as explanatory variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In India the emissions rate and fuel consumption of intra-city buses are estimated using the European driving cycles, which don’t represent Indian driving conditions and in-use operation of vehicles. This leads to underestimation or overestimation of emissions and fuel consumption. In this context, this paper offers some insight into the driving characteristics of intra-city buses using a Global Positioning System. The study has revealed that irrespective of road type and time of travel, a higher percentage of time is spent in idle mode. This is primarily due to alighting and boarding of passengers at regular intervals and fixed delays caused by traffic lights. More than 90 percent of trips have an average speed of less than 30 km h−1. This study has also developed an intra-city bus driving cycle for Chennai and compared it with some well-known international driving cycles. It has revealed that Chennai has unique driving characteristics and, therefore, it may not be appropriate to adopt a driving cycle of another country or city. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Implementing bus rapid transit (BRT) raises many challenging issues of technical, operational, and institutional nature. The present study sets the groundwork for a methodology that can be used to selectively target corridor for BRT modeling in India. Traffic quality parameters, such as traffic flow, speed, travel time, delay time, stop time, and fuel consumption, were modeled to investigate the impact of BRT as compared to present day mixed traffic on traffic and commuter mobility. A microsimulation traffic model was developed for BRT and mixed traffic systems. A developed microscopic model was validated with field measured data using statistical methods and was found good against measured data. A dedicated lane-based public transport system shows the promising results and has to play a significant role in developing sustainable transport systems. These findings can be used to form the basis for developing public transport corridor in present Indian traffic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As is the trend worldwide, India is undergoing rapid urbanization. This means not only that more people than ever before will be living and working in cities, but also that more people and more goods will be making more and longer trips in urban areas. The costs of increasing dependence on cars is resulting in expensive road building and maintenance, clogged and congested roads, high levels of energy consumption along with its economic and environmental costs, worsening air and noise pollution, traffic accidents and social inequities that arise when the poor find transportation services increasingly unaffordable. The most widely used mode of conveyance of public transport in Delhi is "buses". Thus buses form a backbone of the transportation system in Delhi and serve about half of the travel demand while it constitutes less than 1 % of the total vehicle fleet of Delhi. In spite of this, it does not receive any preferential treatment in terms of traffic management, dedicated lanes, and better upkeep/ maintenance of vehicles resulting in that common man who can afford even slightly is shifting from buses to their own vehicles. It may be two-wheelers or four wheelers or even bicycles because of which the number of vehicles on the roads are increasing which is leading to further lowering of speed, congestion, increase in pollution level etc. Strategies to combat these problems would include reducing the emissions per vehicle kilometer traveled and the total number of kilometers traveled. Road congestion may be reduced by the use of good public transport management, traffic management and car pools etc. In this paper, we have conducted a survey based on a structured questionnaire for carpooling. By the analysis of the data collected, we found that if there is no carpooling, the amount required for 968316 Kilolitre petrol for 1289231 cars is Rs. 4213.14 crores per annum while by carpooling, this amount reduces to Rs. 4213.14-1310.98 =2902.16 crores. Thus, a revenue of Rs. 1310.98 crores can be saved by saving 301307 Kilolitre petrol by carpooling in Delhi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delhi's bus fleet is powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) to address poor air quality. CNG has also been implemented in buses in other Indian cities. We evaluate the life-cycle costs (LCCs) of the Standard (high-floor), low-floor, and low-floor air-conditioned CNG buses and their diesel counterparts in India. Given the importance of fuel economy and fuel price for fuel costs, we analyze the sensitivity of the LCCs to these factors. Also, to assess the effect of fuel prices if they were market driven, we evaluate the LCCs of low-floor air-conditioned CNG and diesel buses in India, but with US fuel prices. Our study aims to inform decision-making regarding the implementation of CNG buses, in concert with an assessment of their environmental and health benefits. The LCCs for CNG are higher than for diesel, but CNG negatively affects the LCC of Standard buses proportionately more than for the low-floor buses. The LCC is significantly higher for the low-floor air-conditioned, relative to that of the low-floor, and in particular the Standard, CNG buses. The significantly higher LCCs for the low-floor and low-floor air-conditioned buses, even for diesel, raises the questions of whether these buses are justified by increased patronage, and how they affect transit supply and affordability. The fuel price and fuel economy of CNG are critical for the competitiveness of CNG relative to diesel buses. This, along with the wide variation in CNG and diesel prices, demonstrates the need for careful fuel pricing policies when CNG is implemented in bus transit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study introduces the three-factor theory to identify a factor structure of tranist service. It classifies service attributes into basic, perfomance,and excitement factors according to their importance to overall satisfaction with transits then identifies improvement priorities. Using a 2013 survey of Bus, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and Van riders in Indore, India, this study intends to draw implications for transit planning by answering following questions: What service attributes are critical for customer satisfaction with BRT, Bus and Van?What attributes should be prioritized to improve satisfaction with existing transit services in Indore? Are the answers to the two questions consistent across the three types of transit? We found that across all three types of transit, comfort while riding and safety while waiting are two common basic factors and safety while riding is a common key performance factor. Furthermore, several Van atttributes require extensive improvements while BRT need the least improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The State Road Transport Undertakings (SRTUs) are the economic providers of mass transport in India. The institutional constraints imposed on the SRTUs result in low productivity and inefficiency. In this fiercely competitive environment, the state-owned public transport industry cannot operate sustainably, showing mediocre performance. With relatively scarce financial resources, high political expectations, and competition between operators, the efficiency and performance of the industry must be improved by optimizing the available resources. In this study, an integrated analytical hierarchy process–goal programming technique considering both operators' and users' perceptions is used for performance optimization. The methodology starts with the selection of various performance indicators, considering both operators' and users' perceptions. The decision variables are then categorized into user-oriented and operator-oriented. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP), a multicriteria decision-making tool, is then used to evaluate the decision variables and calculate their weights to be used as penalties in goal programming (GP). Pairwise comparison of decision variables on the AHP rating scale was carried out by experts associated with bus transportation and academia. This was used to assign weights to the variables to denote their priority based on their importance. Then, these weights were assigned to the objective function of the GP problem to find a solution that minimizes the weighted sum of deviations from the goal values. As a case study, performance optimization of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation was undertaken. Twelve decision variables were identified, by taking into account both user and operator perceptions, viz. controllable costs, noncontrollable costs, taxes, staff per bus ratio (fleet operated), safety, accessibility, regularity, load factor, fleet utilization, percentage of dead kilometers to effective kilometers, journey speed, and percentage of cancelled kilometers to scheduled kilometers. The perceived importance of each of these decisive factors from both the users' and operators' perspectives was obtained from the experts and prioritized using the AHP. The results indicated that operator cost and staff per schedule were the most important variables for the operators, while safety of travel had the highest weighting according to the users' perceptions. The optimal solution indicated that increasing the accessibility, safety, and regularity would attract passengers to public transport, which would in turn improve the load factor and influence operators to maximize fleet utilization and reduce cancellation of schedules. Moreover, the solution also suggested that decreasing the staff per bus would further reduce the operating cost. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis was carried out to identify the impact of variations in the decision variables on the performance of the system. The presented method could be used for performance evaluation and optimization of urban rail, metro, and various other public transport systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study focuses on operational efficiency enhancement of university transport system with special reference to Vignan University, Guntur. Vignan University was established in the year of 2008 in remote village named Vadlamudi. The university gets the students from nearer towns. For providing better facilities to the student's community, university started transport system and it have not been going on smoothly. University management is not satisfied with the performance of transport wing in terms of profits and operational efficiency. This study is intended to examine the operational costs and optimal bus facility network allocation. For this study, data are collected from both primary and secondary sources. Data are analysed on the basis of cost-benefit analysis. The results revealed that variations taken place in operating costs, transit operations could save better to management by reallocate resources as per operational cost changes. Transit network setting is one of the causes for incurring high costs. The data analysis reveals that there is a scope for increasing the profits by operational efficiency enhancement. Findings and suggestions of this study may be helpful to the university policy makers for developing more effective and better transport system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open window buses without air-conditioning are a major mode of urban and inter-city transport in most countries. High occupancy combined with hot and humid conditions makes travel in these buses quite uncomfortable. In this study air flow through a bus has been studied that could be the basis for low cost and eco-friendly methods of increasing passenger comfort and possibly reduce drag. The aerodynamics of such a road vehicle has not been studied as previous investigations have been confined to vehicles with closed windows that present a smooth exterior to air flow. Using a 1:25 scaled Perspex model of an urban bus in Delhi, flow visualization was performed in a water channel. The Reynolds numbers were one tenth of a real bus moving at 10 m/s. Smoke and tuft visualizations were also performed on an urban bus at 40 km/h. Numerical simulations were performed at the actual Reynolds number. Even though there were Reynolds number differences, the broad features were similar. Air enters the bus from the rear windows, moves to the front (relative to the bus) and exits from the front windows. Inside air velocity relative to the bus is about one-tenth of the free-stream velocity. The flow is highly three-dimensional and unsteady. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research feeder routes and coordinated schedules were developed for integration of feeder public buses with suburban trains. A Heuristic Feeder Route Generation Algorithm was developed for generation of feeder routes. Optimal coordinated schedules for feeder buses were developed in coordination with the existing given schedules of suburban trains. Genetic algorithm, which is a robust optimization technique, is used for the optimizing coordinated schedules. Andheri and Vileparle suburban railway stations of Mumbai, India were selected as study areas. Feeder routes for public buses and coordinated schedules of public buses for the existing given schedules of suburban trains at the two suburban railway stations were successfully developed in this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]