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Classifying Indian Railway Passenger Stations Using a Multi-criteria Framework

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Abstract

Indian Railways has one of the most extensive rail systems in the world which covers 68,000 km of rail track, and 7318 stations with over 23 million passengers daily. This public transport system is one of the cheapest modes of travel for millions of Indians daily. Railways play a vital role in transportation from origin to destination. A methodology for classifying railway passenger stations was developed in this study. The classification is done in four buckets: the position of the railway station within the network, the position of the Railway Station relative to Settlement (Attractiveness), Railway Station Infrastructure and Passenger Importance. This categorization aims to classify railway stations in the railway network according to accessibility, infrastructure and importance of the station on the network and the region. The research is based on an investigation of 7 parameters on 40 passenger railway stations of the Indian railway's northern division. Two techniques are evaluated for the classification which are general ranking rule and AHP (analytic hierarchy process) and then cluster analysis is conducted for categorization.

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Data availability

All the data associated with Indian Railways in the research are collected through primary surveys. Due to the nature of this research, participants of this study did not agree for their data to be shared publicly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Transport Planning, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India

    Rahul Vardhan Bhatnagar & Sewa Ram

Authors
  1. Rahul Vardhan Bhatnagar
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  2. Sewa Ram
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Contributions

The current classification criteria in Indian Railway are based on the income generated by the station and proposed annual passenger flow through the stations, these criteria of selection do not include the importance of the station in its surrounding urban setting Fand also on the network. The proposed criteria in this paper will categorize stations in a way so that infrastructure can be developed for better station accessibility and the development of multimodal transit hubs. As the transit demand increases in the future railway stations need to be developed in a phased manner to work efficiently and have better travel time reliability for the passengers.

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Correspondence to Rahul Vardhan Bhatnagar.

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Bhatnagar, R.V., Ram, S. Classifying Indian Railway Passenger Stations Using a Multi-criteria Framework. Transp. in Dev. Econ. 9, 3 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40890-022-00173-4

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