Understanding the challenges and opportunities in the Informal Shared Mobility (ISM) and proposing an idea for ISM reforms
Many Indian cities are highly dependent on informal shared mobility (ISM). For instance, only 66 of the 450 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants have access to a formal city bus service. Typically, ISM refers to unregulated, informally owned and operated, demand responsive, unscheduled and flexible shared public transport
The research will focus on selecting a city to identify various challenges in the ISM sector such as infrastructure, regulations, institutional framework, quality of operations, livelihood etc.
The student will select any Indian city (population of around 1.5-2mil) of her/ his choice having predominance of ISM in the city limits. S/he will identify various challenges in the sector. While the sector has several opportunities and challenges, the student will identify any one or two opportunities/ challenges to work on. For instance, if a student identifies poor infrastructure as a challenge to focus on, S/he will analyse it further and prepare a proposal for infrastructure improvement. However, the proposal shall be supported by ideas for getting it implemented which could be regulatory reforms, institutional reforms etc. The idea is to propose an idea that is implementable. It shall be noted that ideas beyond route rationalisation or operational reforms are expected from the study.
