EMBARQ India has been working with the city of Indore, India since 2008 to improve the quality of city bus services. We have been providing ongoing technical advice to Atal Indore City Transport Services Ltd. (AICTSL), the public transport authority, on issues including performance monitoring, route planning, bus procurement and the design and implementation of a pilot bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor.
Given that the majority of public transport demand in Indore is currently served by the paratransit system, developing an understanding of the nature of this system was crucial for effective route and system planning of bus services. Existing information on paratransit services in Indore, however, did not look at the system as a whole but rather at specific aspects. We therefore decided to commission our own comprehensive data collection effort. TARU, a consulting firm, was engaged to perform this study. Some ideas we wished to explore in more detail included whether to formalize paratransit services, replace paratransit vehicles, limit the area in which paratransit vehicles can operate or otherwise enforcing the geography of operation and so on.
The resulting report contains a large amount of data on the following topics:

Paratransit System Characteristics: Routes, coverage, regulations, facilities, traffic levels
Paratransit Vehicles: Vehicle types, vehicle ages, fuel sources, maintenance procedures
Paratransit Operators: Costs, revenues, fare structures, driver profiles
Paratransit Users: Passenger trip details, weekly travel statistics, accessibility, expenditure, socio-economic statistics
Road Safety: Accidents, safety measures, speed limits, overcrowding

If you have any questions or comments, or would like to know more about this research, contact Lakshmi Rajagopalan at lakshmi.rajagopalan@wri.org.