Public Transit User Captivity in Delhi: A Case Study of Metro Rail and Bus Users in Nehru Place Business District

Public transit user access time is an important determinant of public transit being a mode choice for trip making in the city. The attractiveness of public transit usage decreases with increasing access time. User tolerance of access time depends also on the main line haul distance. In other words, users would tolerate higher access time, i.e., more access distance or discomfort in access if their trip is longer. However, the underlying premise of most international research is that public transit is a choice amongst other modes or between two modes of public transit, and this choice is affected by different travel parameters. Walk-based access trips to two modes of transit, Bus and Metro Rail, are analyzed based on a case study involving mode choice that is dependent on access time, main line haul time and income. Results show that while higher access times up to 45 min, will increase Metro system usage which generally has higher income users with mean income INR 25,000 (USD 417, 1USD = INR 60). The probability is between 0.6 and 0.7 that bus users are captives of the system when access time is less than 10 min. Further, bus users would not use the bus if access trip times increase from 10 to 45 min. This implies that while lower income users remain captive of the system despite low accessibility, higher income users will use a better and faster public transit system and eventually choose not to use the public transit system if low accessibility is not addressed. The challenge to maintain high modal shares of public transit is converting captive users into choice users and improving the accessibility of transit systems.