Light Rail Transit - Todays Need for Developing Cities in India

Traffic congestion and excessive fuel consumption are major issues in present scenario all over the world. Due to the rapid urbanization, trips in growing urban areas are enormously increased. In fact, providing bus transit system as a public transport facility is not sufficient to fulfil this increased demand. To deal with such demand light rail transit (LRT) will be a good solution. It is relatively cheap to construct and pollution free mode. It is so flexible mode that it can be operated on all types of Right of way (ROW) as per traffic condition. The aim of this paper is to provide a literature review and to discuss about the previous and existing light rail transit projects, comparison with other transit modes in terms of fuel consumption and also covers a different case study on LRT in various cities of the world. This study also state the problems in present mass transit system of India and possibility of implementation of LRT to overcome these problems. .