INDIAN HIGHWAYS, APRIL 2014 65 IS BUS FARE THE ONLY CONCERN TO URBAN TRIP MAKERS’? AN EXPERIENCE IN KOLKATA SAURABH DANDAPAT*, BHARGAB MAITRA** AND C.V. PHANIKUMAR*** * Research scholar, E-mail: saurabhdandapat@gmail.com ** Associate Professor, E-mail: bhargab@civil.iitkgp.ernet.in *** Accent Fellow, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK. LS2 9JT E-mail: v.p.k.chintakayala@its.leeds.ac.uk ABSTRACT Although bus is the predominant public transport mode, the quality of bus service is extremely poor in almost all Indian cities. The poor quality of bus service along with economic progression is leading to rapid growth of private vehicle ownership and usage in urban areas. Historically, the bus fare has been considered as the only socio-political concern in urban India without any emphasis on the quality of service. The paper presents an investigation on the perception of trip makers towards quantitative and qualitative attributes of bus system in the Kolkata metro city. A stated choice experiment was design and the data collected from trip makers were analyzed by developing Multinomial Logit and Random Parameter Logit models. The willingness-to-pay values were also calculated in order to understand the perception of trip makers towards bus service attributes. The results indicate that the fare is not the only concern to trip makers. The work justify the need for improving the overall quality of bus service to enhance the attractiveness of bus system and the benefit to bus users. 1 INTRODUCTION Bus is the predominant public transport mode in majority of Indian cities. But, the quality of bus service is extremely poor in almost all cities. The poor quality of bus service along with economic progression is leading to rapid growth of private vehicle ownership and usage in urban areas. On the other hand, the scope of capacity augmentation of roads in most of the cities is limited due to non-availbility of land. As a result, there is a growing imbalance between the demand and the supply of transport in urban areas. The growing imbalance has not only aggravated traffic congestion but also increased vehicular emissions. Bus system has the potential to work as an effective instrument for demand management in urban areas. Higher bus usage can reduce vehicle volumes and thereby bring down traffic congestion and vehicular emissions. In fact the role of public transportation system in urban areas has been recognised in National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP 2006). Accordingly, several initiatives have been taken by the Govt. of India and various State Governments to increase the supply of buses (1 & 2) . For example, Govt. of India initiated JnNURM scheme (3) which has added nearly 15000 buses in 61 cities in India. But, the overall poor quality of bus service in urban India is yet to change significantly. In the context of bus service, the fare remained as the only sociopolitical concern. There has been frequent discussions about the bus fare in public domain without any emphasis on the quality of service. It would have been ideal to have a high quality bus service in urban India with a low fare. But, in reality most of the Governments are finding it increasingly difficult even to sustain the existing subsidies on bus transport. Constraints on subsidy and fare have adversely affected the quality of bus service in urban India. In most cases, quality of vehicle is poor, journey time is long, traffic information is absent, and discomfort due to overcrowding is high. However, practically adequate investigation has been done in Indian context to understand if the fare is the only concern to urban tripmakers or the overall quality of bus service is also an important consideration. The present work reports an investigation on perception of urban trip makers towards various bus service attributes. The perception of tripmakers towards bus service attributes has been captured in terms of their Willingness-To-Pay (WTP). The work is demondtrated with reference to a case study of Kolkata metro city. Civil Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, W.B. India