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MOTORINDIA
l
February 2012
133
Need for restructuring
public transport
Transportation in the urban context
assumes great economic significance.
Productive efficiency of urban areas
will be maintained only if the mobil-
ity requirements in cities are fully met
with a greater use of public transport
instead of personal vehicles. This re-
quires both an increase in the carrying
capacity of the public transport system
and a substantial improvement in the
quality of public transport.
Despite the high volumes of traf-
fic, most urban centres in India do not
have any rail transit system to cater to
intra-city movements. Hence, there
would be high dependence on bus
services to meet the public transport
needs for the next several years. This
is likely to call for a major restructur-
ing of public transport provisioning in
urban centres.
This paper highlights the various
options for restructuring the provision
of road-based public transport and
synthesizes them into a strategy for
reform given the commercial viability
of the various activities carried out by
public transport operators in India.
Public transport in India can be clas-
sified into two – rail and road. Out of
the total passenger movement in the
country, 80 per cent is met by road
transport while the remaining 20 per
cent is carried by railways.
Road transport in India is operated
partly by the public sector and largely
by the private sector comprising about
28.7 per cent and 71.3 per cent respec-
tively of the total number of buses
on roads. Participation of the State in
road transport commenced in 1950,
and since then State road transport
undertakings have been formed. The
organizational form for public sector
bus companies varies from State to
State, the most common being that
of a corporation constituted under the
provisions of the Road Transport Cor-
poration Act, 1950. There are 22 such
corporations, and 26 undertakings
have been formed under the Indian
Companies Act, 1956.
Public transport is also operated by
11 Municipal Councils under various
municipal legislations. The remaining
eight undertakings function as part of
government departments.
Currently public bus transport in In-
dia is provided through a multiplicity
of mechanisms. These include own
services which are operated by the
SRTU using its own fleet, the Kilom-
eter Scheme under which private bus-
es are hired to run services as required
by SRTU, and direct permits given by
the State Transport Authority (STA)
to private operators for providing
transport services on specified routes.
Operational performance
The total strength of the urban SR-
TUs grew from just about 10,000 ve-
hicles in 1991 to about 13,500 in 1999,
an increase of 28 per cent. However,
while the total vehicle fleet strength
grew at almost 10 per cent per annum
in the 1990s, the urban SRTU fleet
grew by less than three per cent.
Given that the increase in the na-
tional bus fleet over this period has
also not been spectacular, the size and
spread of urban public transport has
seen a decline in the last five years.
By Dr. M. Rajarajan* & D. Pauldhinaharan**
* Assistant Professor and Research Advisor, Commerce Wing, DDE, Annamalai University. **PhD
Research Scholar, Dept. of Commerce, Annamalai University, Annamalai Nagar - 608 002
expert article