Ahmedabad city is well connected to the major urban centres in the state and the country through an expressway, several national and state highways, the broad-gauge (BG) and meter-gauge (MG) railways and an international airport. The city transportation system is predominantly dependent on roadway systems. The Indian Railways and Gujarat State Road Transport Service provide inter-city rail and bus services respectively.Growth in population and area over decades, is accompanied with even more rapid rise in vehicular population. There were only 45000 vehicles registered in the city of Ahmedabad in 1971. This has gone up to 25 lakh in the year 2010, recording a rise by 52 folds in five decades. In terms of composition, 93% are passenger vehicles. About 73% of the vehicles are two wheelers and cars constitute about 14%.
With about 2,50,000 registered cars in 2010, the car ownership rates in Ahmedabad looks low (44 cars/1000 people) (CEPT-COE Study, 2011). Since the registration numbers include total number of vehicles registered with RTO over the years, it is estimated that under operation vehicles would be around 65% of the total. Based on this car ownership in 2010 is around 30 cars per 1000 population. Adding two wheelers to it, the personalised vehicle ownership rate works out to 230 per 1000 people. Today, Ahmedabad has 24,00,000 total registerred vehicles, out of which 2,63,205 are registered cars (RTO, 2012).
Ahmedabad has grown in form of circular rings around the walled city area which is traditional central business district. The street network evolved historically as ring-radial form, comprising of 5 rings and 19 well defined radials; 11 in the west and 8 in the east. Ashram road, running along the river Sabarmati on the western side, acts as north south arbital. Total road network length within AMC area is 2399 Km (AMC diary, 2011).
As stated earlier, the share of area under the roads constitutes 7.5% of the entire city area. Within the developed area, the area under roads is about 18%. This translates to an average road width of 12m and about 10 kms per sq.km of developed area.
A ring around the city was carved out of the fort wall, which forms inner-ring of the city. The second and the third rings and several radials were developed based on the proposals of 1965 Development Plan. The width of each of these rings is 80 feet, 100 feet and 132 feet.
The third ring on the west was completed as recently as 2000. Due to location of Cantonment and Airport in the north, the ring could not be completed as planned. The fourth ring is defined using the two National Highways, one in the east and the other in the west. The fifth ring was developed as part of fourth plan (approved by the government in 2002). The river Sabarmati divides the city in to two parts. There are eleven bridges which facilitate movement across the city. About 106 km long BG line and 126 km long MG line pass through the city, which act as a barrier at various locations within the city. In order to ease movements across railway lines, several rail-over bridges have been built.
Transit services in Ahmedabad are provided by Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Services (AMTS) and the Ahmedabad Janmarg Limited (AJL), and for regional public transit demand is catered by Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC). GSRTC is providing regional public transport services; this public transport service brings commuters from surrounding towns and villages such as Dehgam, Mansa, Khedbrahma and Gandhinagar.
AMTS is providing public transport since 1947, with 200 routes covering 733 kms of road network, AMTS covers about 88% of the developed AMC area and carry 0.9 million passengers per day. It caters to roughly 11% of the trips in the city. These buses perform roughly 7954 trips on daily basis (AMTS, 2012).
Janmarg BRTS services commenced operations as a closed system in Oct 2009. The network connects central city with traffic generators such as transit terminals, markets, industries and institutions designed to serve the people of Ahmedabad. The BRT system currently with a network length of 59 kms attracts 1.17 lakh passengers daily. There are 9 operational routes and the peak headways are around 2.5 minutes. Due to the dedicated corridors and priority given at major intersections, the peak hour speeds of BRT buses are 25kmph and comparable to mixed traffic speeds.
INTERMEDIATE PUBLIC TRANSPORT MODES There are about 60000 CNG auto rickshaws operating in the city. About 6000-8000 of them operate as shared auto rickshaws known as “Chakdas”. As they ply along the BRTS and AMTS routes at comparative fares, they provide stiff competition to the bus services.
The per capita trip rate including walk, as per AMTS/CEPT (1992) was 1.2, GIDB IPTS (2000) was 1.1 trips per day, GIDB Metro study by DMRC (2003) was 1.16. The same excluding walk was 0.72. Per capita motorized trip rate was 0.52. However, recent study by COE-UT,CEPT show trip rate to be high at 1.44 (all trips). Excluding all the walk trips below or equal to 500 meters, the trip rate of AMC is about 1.39. About 70% of the walk trips were less than a 0.5 km distance.
The average trip length for all modes is 5.02 km. Work trips forms 33% of the total trips followed by education trips at 30%. Shopping/recreation trips are occupying 20% of the total trips, whereas purposes such as business or other hold 7% and 9% respectively.
Western part of the city is dominated by car trips, where as walk and cycle trips are mainly concentrates on eastern part of the city and near to industrial centres. Two wheeler and trips through auto rickshaw are distributed all over the city.