Authors

• Saptarshi Sen, Research Scholar and Sudip Kumar Roy, Professor, Civil Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST), Howrah, West Bengal

Captive public transport commuters are presented with various alternative modes within the public transport domain due to the improvement in public transport facilities. Researchers, till date, have determined the preferred mode of commuters between the public buses and other alternative modes but the preference of the different bus types and the actual selection is not dealt with. This scenario is studied for the commuters of Kolkata Metropolitan Area (KMA) of India. The city buses in Kolkata are classified into Premium and Ordinary buses. The bus type preference for work trips is evaluated by Discrete Choice Model (DCM) and a 30 per cent preference of AC buses is predicted from the Binary Logit Model. Yet, a low rate of actual selection of AC buses is observed during the work trips. Among the revealed reasons which include long waiting times and unreliable bus services, age and income of the commuters have also been found to be statistically significant for such deviation.