1. COST AND BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF FREE PUBLIC
TRANSPORT IN PUNE, INDIA
PARISAR INTERNSHIP REPORT
AMITESH SAHA
MADRAS SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
13.07.2016

2. Acknowledgements:
This paper was supported by Regional Transport Office, Pune and Pune
Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited, Pune. We are thankful to Mr. Jugal
Rathi who provided expertise that greatly assisted the paper.
We are also grateful to Dr. K.S. Hari, Assistant Professor, Gokhale Institute of
Politics and Economics, who moderated this paper and in that line improved the
manuscript significantly.
We have to express out appreciation to Mr. Sujit Patwardhan, Ranjit Gadgil and
Shweta Vernekar for sharing their pearls of wisdom with us during the course of
this paper.

3. TABLE OF CONTENTS:
1. INTRODUCTION:..............................................................................1
2. OBJECTIVE:......................................................................................2
3. LITERATURE REVIEWS:....................................................................4
4. DATA SOURCE AND METHODOLOGY:..............................................5
a) cost analysis...............................................................................6
b) benefit analysis..........................................................................7
5. RESULTS:.........................................................................................8
 COST ANALYSIS.........................................................................................8
A) DIRECT COSTS......................................................................................8
1. Profit and loss accounts of public transportation system..................8
B) INDIRECT COSTS:...................................................................................9
1. Business economy of private vehicles...............................................9
2. Others.............................................................................................11
 BENEFIT ANALYSIS...................................................................................12
1. Traffic Accidents..............................................................................12
2. Air Pollution.....................................................................................13
3. Ridership.........................................................................................15
4. Congestion.......................................................................................18
5. Health..............................................................................................18
6. Others..............................................................................................19
6. CONCLUSIONS:..............................................................................19
7. REFERRENCES:...............................................................................21
Note: Tables are attached separately in excel sheets.

4. 1.INTRODUCTION :
Pune, the cultural and educational capital of the state of Maharashtra is located
approximately 160 kilometers south-east of Mumbai. Pune is also known as a
twin city with two municipal corporations of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. The
major economic activities in Pune are service industries, government,
construction, and more recently, information technology and biotechnology.
With a total population of 5.9 million, Pune urban agglomeration is one of the
fastest growing areas in Maharashtra. The urban agglomeration of Pune including
Pimpri-Chinchwad has made a huge growth in its population in the last 15 years.
From a small figure of 4,485,000 in 2005, its urban agglomeration has grown to
over 5 million in 2015.
Public transport in Pune was mainly Bus system under PMT and PCMT until 2007.
The company, PMPML (Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Ltd.) came into
existence on 19/10/2007 when the two transport undertakings viz. PMT and
PCMT merged. Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML)
operates public buses within the city and in its suburbs. The PMPML operates
the Pune Bus Rapid Transit system, the first of its kind in India, in which dedicated
bus lanes were supposed to allow buses to travel quickly through the city. In
reality, the project has turned out to be a failure receiving little to no patronage
from the local citizenry.
As of December 2015, there were 2047 public buses in Pune, out of which 1557
were on road. Compared to public buses the number of registered private
vehicles in Pune was 392313 by the end of 2015. 1095372 was the number of
average passenger per day who used public transport in December'15 on traffic.
According to ADSI REPORT 2014 there were 1433 traffic accidents by the end of
2014, out of which 1387 were by private vehicles. Increased vehicles on road
means more sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide being released in the air.
According to Maharastra pollution control board the weighted average of sulphur
dioxide was 43.22 µg/m3 (std 80 µg/m3) and NOx ( the oxides of nitrogen) was
88.48 µg/m3 (std 80 µg/m3) on air in Pune. Approximately, 83% SO2 and 85%
1

5. NOx have emitted from vehicles. Other than that, the rate of health diseases, the
road congestions has become terribly increased over years. The rapid growth of
private vehicles is leading to various problems to the society, environment as well
as in the economy.
2.OBJECTIVE:
Public transport provides mobility to the general public, including buses and their
variations. It can play important and unique roles in an efficient and equitable
transport system. It can therefore have diverse impacts (benefits and costs),
including many that are indirect and external (they affect people who do not
currently use transit services).
 High quality (relatively fast, convenient, comfortable and integrated)
transit can attract discretionary travelers who would otherwise drive,
which reduces traffic problems including congestion, parking costs,
accidents and pollution emissions.
 High quality transport can stimulate transport-oriented development
where residents tend to own fewer vehicles, drive less and rely more on
alternative modes than in more automobile-oriented communities. This
can leverage additional travel reductions and benefits (besides just the
travel shifted to transit).
 Highway expansion tends to induce additional vehicle travel which
increases external costs such as downstream congestion, parking demand,
traffic risk, barrier effects and pollution emissions, costs that are avoided if
travelers instead shift to public transit. These impacts should be considered
when comparing roadway expansions with transit improvements.
 These impacts and benefits tend to increase if transit improvements are
implemented with support strategies such as fare free system, walking and
cycling improvements, more compact development, transportation
demand management programs and efficient road and parking pricing.
 Since active transport (walking and cycling) and public transit are
complements, transit travel tends to increase public fitness and health.
 Current demographic and economic trends (aging population, rising fuel
prices, urbanization, changing consumer preferences, increasing health and
environmental concerns) are increasing demand for transit and transit-
2

6. -oriented development and therefore their benefits.
To check whether it is possible to solve issues like traffic congestion, traffic
accidents, road and parking infrastructural costs, automobile costs to consumers,
excessive energy consumption, pollution emissions etc., an hypothetical policy,
the effectiveness(cost and benefit analysis) of free public transport has been
discussed in this paper. Free public transport often called as fare free public
transit or zero fare public transport, refers to public transport funded in full by
means other than collecting fares from passengers. It may be funded by national,
regional or local govt. through taxation or by commercial sponsorship by business.
The concept of freeness is one that may take other forms, such as no fare access
via a card which may or may not be paid in its entirety by the user. There are two
types of people who use buses. The first kind always travel by bus, who can be
called captive users. The second kind lives in a dilemma in choosing a proper
mode of transportation by maximizing their utility of satisfaction levels according
to their rational parameters at given point of time. With a free public transport
two possible things can happen with the ridership. It will either increase or will be
same. There is very less chance of having no effects or negative effects with zero
transportation cost because the basic axiom of rationality is "more is better". Free
public transport will lead to price effects which will eventually make the user feel
richer by nature. With zero transportation cost, they can save the extra amount
which was used to be spent on transport and can substitute it with their preferred
bundles which will increase their ridership. So, this clears out one basic thing i.e.
people who use public transport will definitely be using it with subsidizing fare.
There is another kind of people who treat few luxuries as necessities. For those it
doesn't matter to save few bucks (whatever the internal cost is, based on fuel,
registration, insurance etc.) to risk their times or other priorities they have. So,
those people will not be using public transport whether it's free or not.
The above fact explains that automobile travel will not disappear and all travel
will not shift to public transit. However, at the margin (i.e., compared with their
current travel patterns) many motorists would prefer to drive somewhat less and
3

7. use alternatives more, provided they are convenient, comfortable and affordable.
Satisfying this growing demand for alternative modes can provide a variety of
benefits. When all impacts are considered, improving public transit is often the
most cost-effective transportation improvement.
Section 2 of this paper describes various literature reviews of free transport
system all over the World. Section 3 explains the detailed methodology and data
filtering procedures. Following that, section 4 gives interesting results on
efficiency and equity of free public transport system in Pune. Finally, section 5
explains the future scopes along with drawbacks of this project with concluding
remarks.
3.LITERATURE REVIEWS:
Estonia, France, Germany, Czech republic and Slovakia in Europe, Brazil and
united states in Americas have many towns and cities with fare free public
transport system.
In 2006, among the various works, "Impact and assessment of “Free” Public
Transport measures: lessons from the case study of Brussels" by Cathy Macharis,
Astrid De Witte, Thérèse Steenberghen Stefaan, Van de Walle, Pierre Lannoy and
Céline Polain, was assessed the effects of the introduction of a third payer system
on the mobility behavior from a multidisciplinary viewpoint. This approach
allowed an analysis of various effects that free public transport and, in general,
price policies could entail. The concept of the “third payer system” implies that
the cost of public transport is not paid by the user or provider, but partially or
completely by a third party. Local authorities, other public organizations and
private organizations can enter into such agreements and pay for public transport
for a specific target group in a specific area. The analysis had been performed
through a case study, namely the introduction of free urban public transport for
students at Dutch-speaking universities and colleges in Brussels. In how far this
measure contributed to a more sustainable mobility system had caused much
debate. Also, not everyone was convinced that such a measure was beneficial for
the society. Some people argued that there were better ways to spend the
money, for instance on the quality of public transport. In order to assess whether
this measure has societal benefits, a social cost-benefit analysis (SCBA) had been
carried out. This analysis calculated the benefits and costs of the measure, in
4

8. order to find out if the balance was positive or negative.
Another work by Todd Litman in December'15 on "Evaluating Public Transit
Benefits and Costs" described how to create a comprehensive framework for
evaluating the full impacts (benefits and costs) of a particular transit service or
improvement. It identified various categories of impacts and how to measure
them. It discussed best practices for transit evaluation and identifies common
errors that distort results. It discussed the travel impacts of various types of
transit system changes and incentives. It described ways to optimize transit
benefits by increasing system efficiency, increasing ridership and creating more
transit oriented land use patterns. It compared automobile and transit costs, and
the advantages and disadvantages of bus and rail transit. It included examples of
transit evaluation, and provides extensive references. Many of the techniques in
this guide can be used to evaluate other modes, such as ridesharing, cycling and
walking.
Lauren N. Gase, Tony kuo, Steven Teutsch and Jonathan E. Fielding estimated
"Cost and Benefits of providing free Public transport Passes to Students in Los
Angeles Country" in 2014. This article described the process used to conduct a
health impact assessment of a proposal to provide free public transportation
passes to students in Los Angeles County.
4.DATA SOURCE AND METHODOLOGY:
For cost and benefit analysis, we have collected data from various institutions of
Pune and filtered them. From PMPML we have received depot wise statistical
report for each month since august'08 to aprii'16. Along with statistical report we
have got the annual balance sheet of PMPML from 2008 to 2015. Regional
transport office, Pune has provided me category wise motor vehicle registrations.
We have also noted air pollution data over year from Maharashtra Pollution
Control Board. Accidental Deaths And Suicides in India i.e. ADSI report helped to
find patterns of traffic accidents over year in Pune.
PMPML records statistics from 10 depots ( Swargate, N.T. Wadi, Kothrud, Katraj,
Hadapsar, Marketyard, P station, Sadguru Nagar, Bhakti-Shakti and Nehru Nagar) .
Apart from their own buses, they have PPP (Public Private Partnership) buses,
CNG buses( Operated by C.N.G), Hired buses, spare buses and workshop buses.
5

9. We have added up all the buses from all the depots and calculated average fleet
on road and subtracted it from the total number of buses to get a hand on off
road buses. Apart from number of buses we have sorted out total effective kms
travelled by public buses, earning from sales of tickets, total number of tickets
sold per month, total number of passes issued per month, total amount received
from passes, total number of accidents by public vehicles, consumption of diesel
in liters, consumption of CNG in kg, average passenger per day on traffic, total
earnings from tickets and passes, total number of commuters (tickets and passes),
and bus fares. Average passenger per day on traffic includes ticket sales,
commuters passes, student passes, monthly and casual contracts, luxury services
etc. 'TABLE 2. PUBLIC TRANSPORT DATA' explains the filtered monthly statistics
of PMPML. We have taken average of bus fares as a variables to smoothen the
calculations. 'TABLE 1. FARE STRUCTURE' gives the detailed chart of fares with the
average yearly fares along with per kilometer, per stage travelling distribution.
There are 21 categories of private vehicles. Motor cycles, Scooters and Mopeds
among two wheelers and motor cars, jeeps among four wheelers hold a
significant amount of numbers. Among other private vehicles there are taxies
cabs, auto rickshaw, stage carriage, contract carriage, school buses, Pvt. sector
vehicles etc. 'TABLE 4. REGISTRATION OF PRIVATE VEHICLES' gives the total
number of yearly registered all private vehicles.
a) Cost analysis:
We have focused only on profit and loss accounts from the balance sheet of
PMPML. To calculate the direct cost, we have subtracted the revenue from selling
tickets and passes, from the total revenue and got expected revenue for free
public transport system. Along with revenue we subtracted the printing cost of
tickets and passes, and salary of conductors from the total expenses to get an
expected expense for free public transport. Salary of conductors include the
salary of all those workers who works with ticket and pass system. In PMPML
along with selling tickets, conductors are given works as ticket checkers, depot
cashier, way bill checkers, bank cashier (who submit the amount received each
day by selling tickets to bank) and blockers (who divide the tickets among buses).
PMPML divide these works among the conductors according to their experience
of works. Few conductors works as clerks also. There are approximately 60% of
workers who works in this category. We took 45% of the total salary from the
6

10. administration expenses as conductor's salary. Finally, we compared the current
profit/loss with the expected profit/expected loss to find the direct cost effects.
'TABLE 6. PROFIT AND LOSS' lists the profit and loss accounts.
For indirect cost analysis, we mostly focused on 'business economy of private
vehicles'. We used simple regression model to check whether there is any
significant effect of bus fares on private vehicles. We took avg. bus fare as
Independent variable and number of registered private vehicles as dependent
variable. Finally, We tried to show these results in graphical analysis. Apart from
business we qualitatively explained few other points which can be considered
under cost analysis.
b) Benefit analysis:
For each of the following variables, we first tried to find relationship using simple
regression model. We have taken number of registered private vehicles as
independent variable and ran the regression with each of the following
dependent variables. Later, we explained results with graphical analysis to see if
there is any significant result or not.
'TABLE 3. ACCIDENT DATA' explains the number of road accidents by public
vehicles and the number of road accidents by private vehicles over month. To
check the effects on accidents, we used number of accidents as dependent
variable and ran the regression to compare the effects between private and
public vehicles. Finally, we used graphical analysis to compare the above factor.
'TABLE 5. POLLUTION DATA' explains the monitored ambient air quality calculated
by Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. There are five air quality stations
(Pimpri-Chinchward, Karve Road, Nal Stop, Bhosari, Swarget) in Pune. We took
the monthly weighted average of all the stations because the dates of records are
not the same for all the stations. This four stations mainly calculates SO2, NOx,
and RSPM in air. According to the Central Pollution Control Board 83% SO2 is
being emitted from the vehicles and 85% NOx is being emitted from the vehicles.
So, we calculated 83% SO2 and 85% NOx of the weighted measures of the two
pollutants in 'TABLE 5. POLLUTION DATA'. We used simple regression model and
checked whether there is any significant effects on pollution. We took SO2 and
NOx emission as dependent variables and ran simple linear regressions. Finally,
we compared the results with graphical analysis.
From 'TABLE 2. PUBLIC TRANSPORT DATA', we took the number of ridership as
7

11. dependent variable and avg. bus fare as independent variable and ran simple
regressions. later, we used graphs to check if there is any relationship and
compared them.
Apart from regression analysis results, effects of health and other qualitative
variables have also been discussed as there is no sufficient data available. We
have also done an informal perception survey of 168 people who lives in Pune.
Though the number is not sufficient, some important facts have been written at
the end.
5. RESULTS:
We have tabulated the cost and benefits and discussed it later.
COSTS BENEFITS
A.DIRECT COST
1. Profit and loss accounts of public
transport system.
B. INDIRECT COST
1. Business economy of private
vehicles.
2. Others.
1. Traffic accidents.
2. Air pollution.
3. Ridership.
4. Congestion.
5. Health.
6. Others.
COST ANALYSIS:
All possible factors or variables that can affect fare free public transport system as
costs are explained below.
A. DIRECT COST:
1. Profit and loss accounts of public transport system:
Fare free public transport service must be fully funded from the public purse:
being free, it cannot recover part of its cost from increased fare-box revenue. As
patronage on the system increases, so does the cost of provision. This may create
resistance to measure to improve public transport or promote public transport
use.
8

12. FIGURE 1.COMPARATIVE PROFIT AND LOSS.
Figure 1 explains the annual profits and losses made by PMPML from july'08 to
july'15. The expected profit is the amount of profit after correcting for free public
transport system. From the above figure, it is clear that the public transport
system of Pune has always been being ran in losses. The loss will almost be triple
with an introduction of fare free public system. As of the balance sheet 2015 of
PMPML, the total loss was approximately 171cr Rs. and with a free public
transport system, we could expect it to be 468cr Rs i.e. almost an additional loss
of 300cr Rs.
B. INDIRECT COST:
1. 'Business Economy' of private vehicles:
Greater public transport means that people use fewer cars; as a result, car
manufacturers and service providers (e.g. mechanics, gas stations, etc.) will have
lesser sells in the city. The following is a regression result that have been drawn
from Stata (a complete, integrated statistical software package). It helps to find
out if there is any relationship among the variables and how they are related to
support the above fact about car business.
9
-500
-450
-400
-350
-300
-250
-200
-150
-100
-50
0
Profits/losses (in cr.)
Expected Profits/Losses (in cr.)

13. From the yearly data of average bus fare and number of registered private
vehicles, the above simple regression result explains the following linear
relationship.
Pvt. vehicles= 63091.95 + 9826.91* avg. bus fare (equation 1)
The p-value for avg. fare is 0.9% which is much lower than 5% level of significance.
Therefore we can reject the null hypothesis that the coefficient is not significant.
The adjusted R squared is also 59% i.e. this bus fare can explain private vehicles
approximately 60%. The constant i.e. 63091.95 is not significant because the p-
value is greater than 5%. Hence, if the avg. bus fare becomes zero the number of
private vehicles will not be 63091.95 but 1 unit change in average bus fare will
change 9826.91 units of registered private vehicles with the same sign
(increase/decrease).
10
_cons 63091.95 65826.88 0.96 0.370 -92563.88 218747.8
fare 9826.91 2753.834 3.57 0.009 3315.127 16338.69
noofprivat~s Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
Total 4.4229e+10 8 5.5287e+09 Root MSE = 47342
Adj R-squared = 0.5946
Residual 1.5689e+10 7 2.2413e+09 R-squared = 0.6453
Model 2.8540e+10 1 2.8540e+10 Prob > F = 0.0091
F( 1, 7) = 12.73
Source SS df MS Number of obs = 9
noofprivat~s 0.8033 1.0000
fare 1.0000
fare noofpr~s
(obs=9)
. corr fare noofprivatevehicles

14. FIGURE 2.TOWAY SCATTER DIAGRAM OF AVG. FARE AND NO. OF PRIVATE
VEHICLES.
The above figure explains that the correlation coefficient is 0.8033 which is very
high. As a result, we can conclude that fare free public transport will reduce a
huge number of private vehicles. With a decreasing demand of private vehicles
the manufacturers and service providers of private vehicles will face trouble in
'business economy'.
2. Others:
Among other costs, crowding will be a cost to the operators. With a zero fare cost
along with increasing ridership, the women, children and senior citizen people
will use public transport more but for crowding they will not be comfortable with
the system. A good service and maintenance will then be very much needed.
The demand of fuel will be less as the number of private vehicles will fall. A good
forecasting system would be very much
11
1520253035
fare
200000 250000 300000 350000 400000
no of private vehicles

15. needed because with an increasing demand, the public transport system should
spread over more areas. The speed or frequency probably get slow because of
this high demand of free public transport.
BENEFIT ANALYSIS:
To find the benefit analysis, the following factors have been discussed with simple
regression analysis. The regression models are mostly not suitable to find any
relationship. Therefore, we used graphical analysis in support.
1. Traffic accidents:
Traffic accidents have become a major issue with the growing population not only
in Pune but also in India. From equation 1 it is clear that free public transport will
reduce the number of private vehicles. To see if there is any positive relationship
between the accidents and private vehicles the following result has been
explained.
The above results tells the following linear equation:
accidents= 2331.402- 0.00275* no. of private vehicles (equation 2)
Though p-value is less than 5%, the coefficient is nearly zero. This implies this
model cannot be explained by linear regression. Hence, the result is not valid.
12
_cons 2331.402 220.4569 10.58 0.000 1719.315 2943.488
noofprivatecars -.0027568 .00078 -3.53 0.024 -.0049224 -.0005912
accidents Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
Total 182784.833 5 36556.9667 Root MSE = 105.28
Adj R-squared = 0.6968
Residual 44332.7582 4 11083.1896 R-squared = 0.7575
Model 138452.075 1 138452.075 Prob > F = 0.0241
F( 1, 4) = 12.49
Source SS df MS Number of obs = 6
. reg accidents noofprivatecars

16. FIGURE 3.TRENDS IN ROAD ACCIDENTS.
Since, the data structures are different for accidents based on the periods, we
compared the accidents made by public vehicles and accidents made by private
vehicles with a graphical analysis. The peaks are the total number of accidents of
per year. Though there is no significant trend in the accident rates over year, the
number of accidents made by private vehicles compared to the accidents made
by public vehicles is much higher. Therefore, a reduction of fare will reduce the
number of private vehicles (equation 1) and so as the number of accidents.
2. Air pollution:
The issue of transportation and the environment is paradoxical in nature since
transportation conveys substantial socioeconomic benefits, but at the same time
transportation is impacting environmental systems. From one side, transportation
activities are mobility demands for passengers and freight, while on the other,
transport activities are associated with growing levels of environmental
externalities such as noise pollution, air pollution etc. To find the dependency
among air pollution and vehicles we did the following regression. Here, we took
private vehicles only because the ratio is too high to compare private vehicles
with public buses.
13
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
aug
dec
mar
jul
nov
feb
jun
oct
jan
may
sep
apr
aug
dec
mar
jul
nov
feb
jun
oct
2008TOT
AL
2009 TOT
AL
2010 TOT
AL
2011 TOT
AL
2012 TOT
AL
2013 TOT
AL
2014
Other on road accidents
Accidents by public vehicles

17. The above result tells:
avg. SO2= 24.435- 0.000124* no. of private vehicles (equation 3)
Equation 3 is not significant as the p-value is more than 5%. So, we will accept the
null hypothesis that the coefficient is zero and hence the model will be invalid and
so as the result.
avg. NOx= 40.95082-.0000129* no. of private vehicles (equation 4)
Like equation 3, equation 4 is also not significant since the p-value is much higher
and hence the model is not suitable. Therefore, to find the effects, the graph has
been drawn based on the yearly data to find trends.
14
_cons 24.43578 2.661188 9.18 0.000 18.7281 30.14346
PRIVATEVEHICLESALL -.0000124 .0000108 -1.15 0.269 -.0000356 .0000108
AVGSO2gm3std80 Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
Total 240.176394 15 16.0117596 Root MSE = 3.9591
Adj R-squared = 0.0211
Residual 219.438758 14 15.674197 R-squared = 0.0863
Model 20.7376355 1 20.7376355 Prob > F = 0.2693
F( 1, 14) = 1.32
Source SS df MS Number of obs = 16
. reg AVGSO2gm3std80 PRIVATEVEHICLESALL
_cons 40.95082 5.469199 7.49 0.000 29.22055 52.68108
PRIVATEVEHICLESALL -.0000129 .0000222 -0.58 0.571 -.0000606 .0000348
AVGNOXgm3std80 Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
Total 949.093681 15 63.2729121 Root MSE = 8.1366
Adj R-squared = -0.0463
Residual 926.850292 14 66.2035923 R-squared = 0.0234
Model 22.2433887 1 22.2433887 Prob > F = 0.5714
F( 1, 14) = 0.34
Source SS df MS Number of obs = 16
. reg AVGNOXgm3std80 PRIVATEVEHICLESALL

18. FIGURE 4.TRENDS OF SO2 AND NOx EMISSION.
The above figure tells that the air pollutants SO2 and NOx is mostly mean
stationary over years i.e. it fluctuates around its mean value. With a pretty small
slope, the pollutants has been increased over year compared to the previous year.
The main reason for having mean stationary pulses is because the data is based
on weighted monthly emissions. The number of vehicles has not been constantly
increased over months. It's been fluctuating over months and has been increased
slightly compared to the previous year. Since the increments of private vehicles
over year is much more higher than public vehicles the resultant amount of
pollutants will be somehow lower with a decrease in private vehicles with a zero
fare public transport (equation 1).
3. Ridership:
To see how the free fare public transport would affect ridership, we have checked
the relationship among avg. bus fare and the number of passengers and came up
with the following result:
15
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Aug-08
Apr-09
Dec-09
Aug-10
Apr-11
Dec-11
Aug-12
Apr-13
Dec-13
Aug-14
Apr-15
Dec-15
AVG. SO2 µg/m3 (std.
80)
AVG. NOX µg/m3 (std.
80)

19. ridership=1.68e^08+4977893*avg. fare (equation 5)
The above linear model cannot explain the relationship between fare structure
and ridership because the adjusted R squared is 0.06% i.e. fare can explain only
0.06% behavior of a change in ridership. To check the effects we put the following
graphs.
FIGURE 5.TRENDS OF THE NUMBER OF PUBLIC VEHICLES.
16
_cons 1.68e+08 9.90e+07 1.69 0.141 -7.46e+07 4.10e+08
fare 4977893 4037643 1.23 0.264 -4901864 1.49e+07
riidership Coef. Std. Err. t P>|t| [95% Conf. Interval]
Total 3.2858e+16 7 4.6939e+15 Root MSE = 6.6e+07
Adj R-squared = 0.0691
Residual 2.6216e+16 6 4.3694e+15 R-squared = 0.2021
Model 6.6413e+15 1 6.6413e+15 Prob > F = 0.2637
F( 1, 6) = 1.52
Source SS df MS Number of obs = 8
. reg riidership fare
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
1
7
13
19
25
31
37
43
49
55
61
67
73
79
85
91
97
TOTAL NUMBER OF PUBLIC
VEHICLES ( PMPML,ppp,hired
etc) A+B

20. FIGURE 6.TRENDS OF THE NUMBERS OF REGISTERED PRIVATE VEHICLES.
FIGURE 7.TRENDS IN THE RIDERSHIP.
The above three figure can somehow explain that, though the number of
registered private vehicles has been increased over year, the number of public
vehicles and so as the ridership has not been increased at all over year. The peaks
are the yearly totals. A decrease in private vehicles will make the ridership shift to
public transport with an increase of number of public vehicles.
17
0
50000
100000
150000
200000
250000
300000
350000
400000
450000
2000-01
2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
2005-06
2006-07
2007-08
2008-09
2009-10
2010-11
2011-12
2012-13
2013-14
2014-15
2015-16
PRIVATE VEHICLES (ALL)
0
50000000
100000000
150000000
200000000
250000000
300000000
350000000
1
7
13
19
25
31
37
43
49
55
61
67
73
79
85
91
97
TOTAL PASSANGERS ON
TRAFFIC (TICKETS AND
PASSES)

21. 4.Congession:
A public bus can carry almost 72 passengers at a time. A public bus occupies
almost 30 square meters. For the same 72 persons, an average of 1.2 persons per
car gives an estimate of 60 cars that take 1000 square meters and so as for cycles
it takes 90 square meters. The above picture can easily explain how a decrease in
numbers of private vehicles can make a free space. With a zero transport public
transport the number of private vehicles will be so low( equation 1) that the road
congestions will be off a lot.
5.Health:
Apart from the benefits mentioned above, health is another factor which will be
more affected with a free public transport. A large part of the World believes that
cars are the best mode of transportation. They pay a decent dollar to fill up their
tanks, sit in traffic and waste time. None of these seems weird to them. They fail
to see the consequences of this mentality.
For those of us who are lucky enough to avoid accidents in the road, no one is
safe from the stress and in activity that occurs during commutes to work, school,
friend's house, events etc. This cause several health problems driving up our
health care cost. According to Public health care survey obesity and respiratory
problems has emerged as a major driving force to health care cost. The obesity
rate is too much high because there's too much sitting going on. People wake up,
drive to work, sit in front of a desk for eight hours, drive home, sit at a table to eat
18

22. or to watch TV and then they are off to bed to repeat the cycle. No matter how
few minutes the doctors say to everyone that they should exercise a day, it still
seems too many to fit into the daily routine. The problem is, exercise should not
be something that everyone needs to fit into their day. It should be in their
natural part of the day, should be something unavoidable just like it was through
our evolution.
With a large number of vehicles on road the RSPM (RESPIRABLE SUSPENDED
PARTICULATE MATTER) has been increasing indirectly over the natural level in
Pune. In places where public transport is free and people are less likely to drive
cars, the obesity rate and respiratory problems are significantly lower. With a fare
free public transport, the number of vehicles will be much lower and so as the
health problems.
6. Others:
Free public transport will make the unemployed more enthusiastic searching jobs.
Employment will somehow be positively affected that will lead poverty reduction
in long term. Along with employment, street businesses will be increased with the
foot traffic. A lesser car will increase the street spaces to increase cycling and
walking. Businesses aren't the only ones that benefits from foot traffic. People
themselves will be benefited as well. When thinking about the amount we have to
pay to own a car vs. a free bus, the car is astronomically more expensive. Down
payments, insurances, gasoline etc. these all extra expenses, one has to think
about when owning a car. For an alternative it depends on the design of the city.
For a well designed city with free public transport the cost will be zero. Besides
social structures, cars don't allow you to be physically social with the outside
World. you can't text, you can't call, you can't do anything but sit in your secluded
box and think about all the time you are wasting. So, why would anyone choose
this over the alternative? Even when travelling along, public transportation never
fails to provide entertainment to everyone.
6.CONCLUSIONS:
Sustainable transport systems make a positive contribution to the environmental,
social and economic sustainability of the communities they serve. Transport
systems exist to provide social and economic connections, and people quickly
take up the opportunities offered by increased mobility with poor households
19

23. benefiting greatly from low carbon transport options. The advantages of
increased mobility need to be weighed against the environmental, social and
economic costs that transport systems pose.
Transport systems have significant impacts on the environment, accounting for
between 20% and 25% of world energy consumption and carbon dioxide
emissions. The majority of the emissions, almost 97%, came from direct burning
of fossil fuels. Greenhouse gas emissions from transport are increasing at a faster
rate than any other energy using sector. Road transport is also a major
contributor to local air pollution and smog. Cities with overbuilt roadways have
experienced unintended consequences, linked to radical drops in public
transport, walking, and cycling.
Public transportation is the absolute key to solve the climate crisis we are
currently in. We have a carbon budget that's currently dwindling. Scientists are
saying the worst case scenario that we have 11 years before we reach our carbon
budget and get us to two degrees in global warming which every scientists have
agreed is the danger zone and from which we will not recover. Therefore,
automobile transportation and transportation overall is such a huge percentage
of out greenhouse gases and the emissions that we omit. The only one sector
where we can make the difference if we can get people out of ice, out of internal
combustion engine cars and into public transportation (especially if it's
electrified).
According to the informal perception survey, a greater percentage of people of
Pune think that a better service quality should be consider first in case of public
transportation rather than a zero fare system. Both the service quality and zero
transportation are complementary to each other.
Through the evolution, more and more lower class citizens have begun to take the
bus around the suburbs as the price of cars and gasoline continue to rise. On the
other hand, the high class citizens have continued to buy cars. This is only because
upper class citizens don't want to be considered as lower class citizens.
By raising awareness of this problem and showing people the benefit of public
transportation system (as if it is not just for lower class citizens) we can get
enough people on board to speed up new upgraded design of public
transportation and hopefully get them to run close enough to the suburbs to
make bus a more viable option than driving.
20

24. There was lack of suitable data to show the positive trends of various benefits
with free public transportation system in Pune. A better data without any gaps
would help it. The public transport system is already being subsidized. The further
subsidization would not be possible with this great amount of losses. Therefore a
further study regarding the ways of making up the losses is very much required.
There is no cities or towns where there is fare free public transportation system in
India. Therefore, this hypothetical cost and benefit analysis of free public
transport system is mostly based on intuitions. The cost analysis has also been
made based on approximated values mostly because of lack of efficient
transparency and methodologies of the current public transportation service of
Pune.
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21

25. 5. William R. Black (2006), "Social and Economic factors in Transportation",
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22

26. 14. Open Govt. data Platform India(1996), Govt. of India
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23