Abstract:

The centralized transport system of Kolkata Metropolitan City exhibits the dependency on mass transport services. In the multimodal mass transport system of Kolkata, both road based modes viz. buses, both state owned and private, mini buses, trams; and rails viz. suburban, circular and metro act as major modes of mass transport services. But Kolkata has a unique distinction of satisfying 13.60 million passengers (57.88 percent of the total passengers) on an average week day through road based mass transport services in comparison to the 4.80 million passengers (20.42 percent of the total passengers) through railway in 2011. Such variation reveals the primacy of road based mass transport services at the city core. The extent of availability of and accessibility to such road based mass transport reflects the level of actual and potential mobility of people. Although the road based mass transport system in most of the developing cities is dominated by the public sector companies with certain degree of privatization, but such condition get reversed in case of Kolkata. Government owned and private buses and trams are the major road based public transport modes of Kolkata. Calcutta State Transport Corporation (CSTC), Calcutta Tramways Company (CTC), and West Bengal Surface Transport Corporation (WBSTC) are the major State Transport Undertakings (STUs) owned by the state government in Kolkata with a total number of 1018 buses and 265 trams. The privately owned buses are of normal and small sizes and are popularly known as Private and Mini Buses respectively. In 2010, there were 5002 privately owned buses in the city of Kolkata with 4249 private and 753 mini buses, which represent a powerful dominance over the public buses (District Statistical Handbook of Kolkata, 2016). The traffic and transport scenario of Kolkata has been experiencing a gradual privatization of most of the road based mass transport services. Since the initiation of the new millennium, the overall performance of State Transport Undertakings (STUs) in Kolkata is declining significantly, which not only creates a serious socio – economic and political impact on the state transport.