Demand & Supply Strategies to Ease Peak Hour Congestion in Metro Rail Transport System

The demand for Urban transportation is characterised by a large scale temporal and spatial variations. Till recently our approach has been to increase the supply by way of introduction of more trains, increasing the length of the trains, optimising the time table to increase the capacity of the system. However, there is a limitation of supply side determined by the design capacity of the systems beyond which any addition in the capacity requires huge capital investments and a need for demand side interventions to actually spread the demand across the time and space. In this study, an attempt has been made to identify the potential Transport Demand Management tools applicable to Urban Rail Transportation systems with a special focus to differential pricing. The supply management strategies have also been identified on the basis of literature survey. A combination of demand and supply management strategies has been proposed to ease peak hour in Metro rail transport system.