Integrated Performance Assessment and Service Level Benchmarking of Urban Bus System using Fuzzy Logic

Ever increasing personalized modal share in Indian urban scenario has resulted in multiple issues like congestion, delays, deteriorating ambient air quality and increased accident rates. Existing Public transportation systems are either falling short of meeting the travel needs or deemed ineffective owing to multiple factors. Ever increasing personalized vehicular ownership due to improving per capita income of the household is resulting in gradual drop in occupancy of public transportation systems like buses. This scenario is almost similar in all progressive cities in India. During the recent past, Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), State and Central Governments are exploring the option of introducing Mass Rapid Transit Systems (MRTS) to alleviate the above concerns. But, financial feasibility of such projects, demanding high capital investment, is a major bottleneck. However, societal benefits of these projects will pay off the investments during their life cycles. It is also important for the authorities to focus on developing sustainable cities which can maintain equilibrium in social, economic and environmental aspects. Opting for sustainable transportation planning would address the said objectives by adopting appropriate planning practices and policy analysis. Sustainable transport planning needs a good assessment of the current scenario and due to non-availability of such assessment mechanisms, it was felt necessary to develop a suitable and comprehensive assessment scheme that appraise the current scenario of existing public transport system with pre-defined Performance Indicators (PI) having its special emphasis on environment, economic, financial and social sectors. Further, an appropriate benchmarking process to carry out a bespoke performance assessment of urban bus system with sustainability as key node is also been developed. Augmenting the same, an Indicator based framework is developed with 30 evaluators nested under 8 Performance Indicators followed by a weight based ranking system. Till date, in the Indian benchmarking system of urban bus transport; no standardized mathematical approach is found to handle the imprecision and uncertainty that prevail in such assessment. In this context, an attempt is being made to normalize such uncertainties in benchmarking using Fuzzy Logic membership functions.