Sustainability Integration Index of Metro and Buses for Evaluation of Transport Policies

With rapid urbanization, major Indian cities are facing issues with traffic congestion, air pollution, etc. Despite having a well-established public transportation infrastructure, including metro rail and buses, Delhi experiencing a large increase in private vehicle ownership which might be due to poor operational characteristics of public transportation and their integration. In this direction, expanding public transportation service options will encourage commuters to utilize these modes, and in that scenario, a bus might serve as a feeder to the primary transit like metro. This situation should enable commuters to travel seamlessly across public transportation modes to reach their destination. To do so, the integration between these modes needs to be studied holistically considering sustainability and improving integration accordingly. Some researchers have developed methods to estimate the sustainability integration index (SII) to study prevailing integration levels considering certain parameters. However, in the present study, an attempt has been made to consider 15 relevant parameters to estimate SII more realistically. The proposed method has been developed considering the data of user perception, expert opinion, bus and metro operation from three metro stations namely Ashram, Dwarka Sector-10 and Kashmere Gate in Delhi. The study found that integration between metro rail and buses in terms of SII (out of 100) is about 61, 50 and 55 at Dwarka Sector 10, Ashram and Kashmiri Gate, respectively. The developed method is also applied to evaluate relevant transport policies to demonstrate their suitability and utilization by authorities to implement appropriate policies to increase integration levels.