Impact of introducing a metro line on urban bus services

Abstract

Many cities have introduced metro rail systems over the past two decades, particularly in developing countries. However, there is lack of knowledge on the impacts of new lines on the service and ridership for the related urban bus lines, and in particular those directly affected by the opening of the new service(s). We undertake a comprehensive analysis of service supply and travel demand patterns of the newly introduced metro rail and the existing urban bus services for the city of Bengaluru, India. We analyse network configuration, service schedule and passenger demand ticketing data to establish the relative travel characteristics of the two modes and the impact of the metro on bus service supply and demand. Additionally, the travel characteristics before and after the first wave of Coronavirus pandemic were analysed to establish its impact on the users of both the modes. Demand for bus services has proven to be more resilient than for metro services while other travel characteristics of users remained similar before and after the pandemic. The travel demand, bus network and service supply characteristics were used to identify a framework for bus service rationalisation for improved integration with the metro. The two systems were observed to be inherently complimentary due to users’ preference of buses for shorter trips and metro for the longer trips, even on bus routes operating parallel to the metro. Hence attempts for network rationalisation need to identify routes with high share of bus demand parallel to the metro before selecting them for rationalisation.