Benchmarking: A tool for evaluation and monitoring sustainability of urban transport system in metropolitan cities of India.

Highlights • Current study involves identification of indicators and dimensions of transport system sustainability, selection of urban areas, developing composite sustainable transport index etc. Fig. 1 shows detailed flow chart of methodology used for carrying out transport system benchmarking as a part of this study. • Radar diagram and gap analysis approach is used to present facts about transport systems of selected Indian cities in more interesting way. Qualitative gaps which exist in transport system performance represent potential improvement areas of the transport system. • To decide relative importance of each indicator in overall sustainability, sensitivity analysis is more important. So, a window based application is prepared using.net (Dot net) platform. It provides an interactive UI (User Interface) (as shown in Fig. 4) and facilitates monitoring of the corresponding change in index value even due to change in an indicator weight. Every small change in indicator weight can be well simulated through these index values. It helps to understand the weight change impact of indicators and dimensions on sustainability and hence on the performance of urban passenger transport system. The program also gives a graphical output of deviation of index values (as shown in Fig. 5) from the ideal case of equal weights. Abstract Increasing number of issues related to transport system around the world has raised concern about sustainable development. For developing country like India, the role of transportation sector has become critical in creating supporting growth of diverse sectors of its urban economy. The key issues of present state of transport system are higher level of motorization with dismally low share of public transport. Both of these issues are intertwined with number of social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainable development. Hence, there is a need for an evaluation approach which will help to analyze 'macro-level' system to give 'micro-level' analysis of the transport system. Benchmarking is one such method of comparing performances and practices and to learn from best. This paper is an attempt to study the use of benchmarking in performance improvement of the transport system. Results obtained through the study shows that the cities having a better modal share of sustainable modes occupy a higher rank with greater values of the sustainability index. In the current study, a software tool for monitoring the sensitivity of composite index of transport system towards performance indicators of sustainability is also developed. The comparative analysis of current study facilitates city-to-city learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]