Case Study Planning of Fixed-Route Fixed-Schedule Feeder Service to Bus Stops in Rural India Sudhanshu Sekhar Das 1 ; Bhargab Maitra 2 ; and Manfred Boltze 3 Abstract: Rural feeder service between villages and bus stops is largely a missing component in developing countries such as India. Tradi- tionally, 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. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)TE.1943-5436.0000419. © 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers. CE Database subject headings: Rural areas; Buses; Public transportation; India; Routing. Author keywords: Rural feeder service; Generalized cost; Measure of effectiveness; Feeder vehicles; Feeder routes. Introduction Over several decades, the lack of roads in rural areas has been a major bottleneck for accelerating the economic growth of develop- ing countries such as India. In recent years, road connectivity in rural India has improved significantly with the construction of roads under a rural road development program (Sikdar 2002). Rural population, which constitutes about 70% of the country’ s popula- tion, predominantly includes economically backward households with negligible vehicle ownership. Therefore, not only rural roads but also the public transportation system is an important consider- ation in the context of India’ s economic development. All major or higher-order roads in rural India are generally served by the bus system, but feeder service between villages and bus stops is largely a missing component. Traditionally, walking and bicycles have been used by rural commuters for accessing bus stops. With the development of rural roads, it is now possible to operate a feeder service for the transfer of passengers between villages and bus stops. Accordingly, the planning of rural feeder service has become a necessary task. Several studies have been reported in the literature on routing, scheduling, and design of feeder service in urban areas (Wirasinghe 1980; Geok and Perl 1988; Martins and Pato 1998; Shrivastava and Dhingra 2001; Shrivastava and O’Mahony 2006, 2009; Li and Quadrifoglio 2010). However, there is little information available regarding the planning of rural feeder services in developing coun- tries. Also, adequate emphasis has not been given to the indirect costs to users resulting from hard factors (e.g., walking distance and waiting time) and soft factors (e.g., crowding inside vehicles) of feeder service. In general, planning of feeder service has been carried out considering only the direct cost (or fare) to users and the operational viability of the service. Poor quality of transportation services is a major concern in developing countries such as India. It is necessary to consider both direct and indirect costs to users in the planning of rural feeder services. A case study is presented in this paper for the planning of feeder service in India with due consid- eration to direct and indirect costs to rural populations and the 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 will- ingness to pay (WTP) of rural commuters with respect to various attributes of rural feeder service. The travel demands likely to be generated from different villages are expected to be low, and there- fore a demand-responsive feeder service may be beneficial in a rural context. However, the scope of the present work is limited to the planning of a rural feeder service with a fixed-route, fixed-schedule form of operation. Also, the restructuring of existing bus routes and relocation of bus stops are not included within the scope of the present work. A feeder route aims to serve rural populations located in the catchments of a bus stop. Therefore, one end (i.e., the bus stop) of the route is fixed, but the other end could be any of the villages located in the catchments of the bus stop. A key issue affecting both user costs and operational viability is the starting point of the route at the village end. The other issues are selection of vehicle type, service headway, and fares. Two types of vehicle (called Trekker and Tempo) that are generally used in rural India are considered as 1 Principal, RSR Rungta College of Engineering and Technology, Bhilai, Chattisgarh, India. E-mail: ssdas8@gmail.com 2 Associate Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India 721302 (corresponding author). E-mail: bhargab@civil.iitkgp.ernet.in 3 Professor, Dept. of Civil Engineering and Geodesy, Darmstadt Univ. of Technology, Petersenstr. 30, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany. E-mail: boltze@ verkehr.tu-darmstadt.de Note. This manuscript was submitted on August 4, 2011; approved on February 13, 2012; published online on February 16, 2012. Discussion per- iod open until March 1, 2013; separate discussions must be submitted for individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Transportation En- gineering, Vol. 138, No. 10, October 1, 2012. © ASCE, ISSN 0733-947X/ 2012/10-1274-1281/$25.00. 1274 / JOURNAL OF TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERING © ASCE / OCTOBER 2012 J. Transp. Eng. 2012.138:1274-1281. Downloaded from ascelibrary.org by Indian Inst Of Technology on 10/05/12. For personal use only. No other uses without permission. Copyright (c) 2012. American Society of Civil Engineers. All rights reserved.