Public Transport: A solution for Fuel conservation

While traveling in a local bus of Surat city, I saw vehicles vehemently moving from here & there. We all have seen this phenomenon called 'traffic', daily in front of us or while being a part of it. Sometimes we might wonder, where do these many vehicles actually go & as such why are so many people traveling at almost any given time of the day? There can be hundreds of answers but my question isn't this. I wonder why do we have a habit of using petrol "so many times" in a single day for a single given route in a city?

The area of concern here is, why do we use petrol so many times to travel on a route for which Public transport is already available , isn't it? Yes, we all have different time schedules & buses do not work according to us but still, just think for a moment, what if number of buses are increased for all routes?

In my limited experience in few metros & tier-II cities of India, I found that local bus services are reasonably good and in cities like Ahmedabad one needs to wait just for a few minutes to get a bus as there are huge number of buses traveling on almost every route. Now, the crux of my discussion. If we reduce usage of personal vehicles & increase the usage of public transport as much as possible, we shall implement following Economics:

1. Reduced usage of Petrol except for those who use for traveling to other cities i.e. highway traveling. This includes Heavy load commercial vehicles, trucks, people traveling to other cities & few more variables.

2. Increased reliance on Public transport thus reducing Expenditure of households, Resulting in higher Real Incomes. Higher real incomes mean either higher savings or higher demand in form of higher spending, both being beneficial to our growing economy.

3. Comparatively reduced demand for Petrol will result in reduced Demand-Supply gap of Petroleum. This means the scarcity will reduce thus lowering the prices of petrol. Even if Prices are increased, it won't affect the Public transport users as that would mean hardly an increase of Re 0.5-1 per KM in fare rates.

4. Here, Government has the lease to increase prices by a more rate as compared to being done currently as Per-capita marginal expenditure shall be low due to high usage of Public transport. This will help the oil companies to reduce their loses as all of them sell Petrol bearing huge loses every year.

Thus it seems to be a good deal to enhance the usage of Public transport but some issues crop in. They are:

1. If City buses are used, what about the interior regions where buses don't reach or can't reach?
Ans.: Auto Rickshaws are a good option here, they do reach interior regions & streets either directly for a single passenger or in sharing. If the distance is mearge, one can walk too. Good for health!

2. What about those who travel on highways? They're not going to reduce the consumption.
Ans.: Yes they aren't, but at least the total consumption is going to reduce as city buses will need a little more to cope up with the increased demand of fuel. Even if they(public transport) start consuming more, as said earlier Fares shall increase by just a few Rupees per km or even lesser. That's much affordable than spending huge amounts almost daily on fuel for personal vehicles with a plethora of allied problems like Parking, Maintenance of vehicles & many more.

Thus, I attempt to put up a logical model of thinking that can help us to conserve more fuel, become more efficient, increase our real incomes, fulfill other important needs & become productive. Above views are completely open to constructive debates & arguments. Do express you views by following the blog &/or commenting.