Public transport provision in Ahmedabad, India: Accessibility to work place

The public transport system, which is an essential mode of transport for a large section of population in developing cities due to reasons related to its provision and traffic condition, imposes time and space constraints on its users. Therefore, its use restrains an individual's activity participation and consequently the use of the service. This paper investigates the provision of public transport in Ahmedabad, India by Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Service (AMTS) in terms of the accessibility it provides to the work activities. The activity participation and travel habits of individuals were determined by conducting a primary survey in September 2002. These individual characteristics, temporal and spatial characteristics of AMTS buses and activities were entered to a GISbased time-space activity model to find the total number of feasible work locations that can be accessed by using the AMTS service from different residential areas. The results indicate that very few residential clusters had proper access to work places and the access varied spatially depending upon the participating income group and characteristics of the work place. The reason for this was found to be high access, egress and waiting time required while using AMTS buses.