Economic Evaluation of Transportation Project: A Case Study of Ferry System for IIT Guwahati

Abstract

Transportation projects hold a major share of the economic investments made in India. Evaluation of alternate strategies is necessary to optimize gain from investments in terms of facilities and costs. Various methods like NPV, IRR can be used for feasibility studies of projects. The study consists of measuring the direct--indirect costs and overall benefits. For the economic evaluation of the proposed project, we have used a cost-effective approach comparing the costs and the outcomes from the different means of transportation. In IIT Guwahati campus, the major means of public transportation is a Bus service provided by Green Valley Travels Private Ltd. The rise in campus population is pushing this service to an extreme level causing discomfort to passengers. Located on the north side of river Brahmaputra, IITG Campus is 20 km away from the main Guwahati city with Saraighat Bridge being the only connecting link by road. Saraighat Bridge is the first rail-cum-road bridge constructed over the River Brahmaputra in Guwahati in 1962 by the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. It is the only bridge over the river Brahmaputra for about 100 km upstream and downstream. Daily huge amount of highway traffic is forced to take Saraighat Bridge in order to enter city and northeast States, resulting in slow moving long queues, almost choking the vehicular flow. This traffic jam on the way to city is responsible for the further increment in travel time. It takes about 75–90 min to reach city due to high level of congestion. The alternate ways to reach city are either by Auto-rickshaw or by Ferry. The existing Govt. Ferry Transport hardly takes 20 min to reach city, but there is no proper facility available to reach Ferry-Ghat. Our work elaborates the socioeconomic evaluation of establishing Ferry Transportation system from the IITG campus to Guwahati city. After a thorough survey of the costs and benefits involved, final Cost benefit analysis of the proposed ferry system show a high internal rate of return. The project appears to be beneficial both in terms of cost-saving and time-saving. Practical implementation of the proposed project will promote overall socioeconomic growth.