A Service Operation Management Perspective to City Bus transport Service

Among the several services that haven’t been able to keep up with the exponential growth of Indian cities is public transportation.

Public transport systems in India are amongst the most heavily used in the world being a primary mode of road transport for a large number of Indian citizens. Efficient public transportation networks ease commute and transportation needs thus making the city accessible and more livable.

The studio project was done to understand the public transport system in a city its challenges and issues. A case city was chosen to do a detailed analysis on different aspects that influence the service operations and management of the city bus transport service. The study involved different aspects of the city bus transport system namely adoption strategies, contracts management, route rationalisation and feeder integration, Automatic Fare Collection System (AFS), Integrated Transit Management System (ITMS), Depot Management System (DMS), terminal management, bus stop management, incident management, bus maintenance, revenue management, fare determination.

A variety of tools from operations management, service management and strategic management such as the fishbone diagram and RACI matrix were used to understand the system. An understanding of the transport policy, case studies and best practices both nationally and internationally, helped identify the challenges being faced in the case city. Citizen surveys, inputs and data from the Integrated Transport Management System (ITMS) system gave an opportunity to analyze the system in depth. Data visualization tools helped represent the data analyzed. The studio outcome was to give proposals for addressing the issues that were identified in the case city, thereby increasing ridership, citizen satisfaction and improving the city bus transport system.