Strategies for Sustainable, Efficient, and Economic Integration of Public Transportation Systems

In India, the city and intercity State Road Transport Undertakings (SRTUs) cater 6.8 million passengers/day over a length of 1.48 billion passenger-km/day during 2015–2016. The average occupancy ratio of 47 SRTUs has decreased by 1.56%, from 70.74 in 2014–2015 to 69.65 in 2015–2016. The traditionally followed operational plan for the public transportation system in urban areas results in a financial loss of 7% in SRTUs; from Rs. 10,587.98 crore in 2014–2015 to Rs. 11,349.78 crore in 2015–2016. In order to achieve the equalization of public service, there is a necessity for operational integration of the public transportation system to reduce the financial losses to public buses. The public transportation system productivity and efficiency could be maximized through the components of the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) like Electronic Ticketing Machines (ETMs) and Global Positioning System (GPS) equipped with Vehicle Tracking Unit (VTU), which helps in the collection of data for a network. In this paper, the bus transit frequency is evaluated for one route with even headway by point check method. The bus service frequency software (Visual Basic-VB6) is developed to estimate user and operator costs for economic analysis. The results show that the waiting time cost of the passenger and the fleet size is minimized using deficit function as the solution for timetable synchronization and vehicle scheduling.