Parvesh KUMAR

Biographical note
Parvesh Kumar is a cyclist, a planner, and a cycling technology innovator. He is the Head of Innovations at iTrans, a company started by his friend and colleague Dr. Anvita Arora as the business incubation unit of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. iTrans works with policy makers, city governments and the private sector to plan and design sustainable and inclusive cities. He has worked with iTrans to establish their innovations vertical over the last 5 years. Today, he is a man who chooses to stand for the rights of cyclists who are mostly as silent as their mode is. His work focuses on creating safe and integrated transport systems that are inclusive of the needs of cyclists. He is currently pursuing a PhD from TERI on developing an evaluation framework for Financial and Economic Viability for integration of Bike share and Public Transit system in Indian cities.

Presentation: Assessment of socio economic benefits of Bike share system integration with public transit (PT) – case study, Pune, India
Many cities in India are now planning for Bike sharing (BS) projects. While the social benefits of BS are incontestable, we still need to understand the economic value of investing in bike sharing for our cities to make them financially feasible. The paper presents an evaluation framework using validated indicators to analyze the benefits of integrating bike share systems with transit systems in India. It presents a case study (Pune city) and uses substantial city level primary data and geospatial techniques to illustrate how integrating bike share with Bus systems (especially BRT) can realize these benefits for the city and lead to increased transit ridership. The evaluation framework will enable projectization and thus investment in bike sharing systems in India which hitherto have eluded the typical financial feasibility models of transport projects.