Resumen
Modal Shares of Public Transports are declining in many developing cities in India. Deteriorating quality of Public Transport has forced many commuters to shift from Public Transport to Personal modes. This shift has translated into ever increasing traffic congestion, air and noise pollution, Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, reduction and deterioration of public spaces and urban form, social exclusion and many other negative externalities. In order to overcome all such negative externalities, one must concentrate on laying an appropriate platform for developing sustainable cities which can balance the environmental, social and economic objectives. Sustainable transport planning refers to transport policy analysis and planning practices that support sustainable development. A critical component of sustainable transport planning is the development of a comprehensive evaluation program that evaluates the transport system performance based on an appropriate set of environmental, economic, financial and social indicators. Current study aims at development of such indicator groups which are appropriate for evaluation of intra city urban bus transport system, keeping in view the broader objective of sustainable development. Currently a unique attempt is being made to develop such evaluation process, which is suitable and mature enough to carry out a tailor made evaluation of intra city urban bus transport system with sustainability as a key node, complementing which an attempt has been made in developing an Indicator based framework to understand and evaluate the public transportation system by developing 8 Performance Indicators with 30 evaluators following which a weight based ranking system is adapted to rank the Urban Bus System as a whole.