Abstract:
Modal shares of public transport are on continuous decline in many urban areas due to negligence of government and operating agencies, inconvenient and unreliable services which leads to unsustainable development. Therefore, policy makers, stakeholders and government is looking towards more suitable, economic, reliable and convenient service which can mitigate the current issues of congestion, safety and pollution. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is an urban transportation scheme that is considered by many countries in public transportation planning now-a-days. It provides comfortable, reliable, and safe services that has a potential to attract significant commuters from private modes to mitigate the problems of congestion, pollution, and traffic accidents. This research is aimed at evaluating the potential of BRT Peshawar to attract commuters pertaining to private modes, and also the comparison of BRT Peshawar with international standards of evaluation. The analysis of modal shares is carried out with the separate binary logit models to model the choices of commuters pertaining to owned car, motorcycle, and taxi towards BRT Peshawar based on identified service attributes that effect the modal shifts. The findings reveal that travel time and vehicle operating cost influence the inter-shifts of private and BRT modes. The travel time significantly affect the modal shifts of motorcycle and taxi users while vehicle operating cost influence more the choice of owned car users. BRT Peshawar has a significant potential to attract commuters of private modes. The shift proportion of taxi users is high as compared to users of car and motorcycle to use BRT as a mode of trip making. This research study has also evaluated BRT Peshawar by comparing it with international standards of BRT “BRT Standards 2016”. It was found satisfactory as it meets most of the criteria of international standards, and achieved “Gold Standard BRT” status. However, improvement is needed in some key areas like service planning, infrastructure, and access and integration in which it has scored little low. The policy makers and operating agencies should focus on operating hours, passing lanes, bicycle lanes, and integration of bicycle sharing for increased ridership, service quality and user satisfaction.
