A combinatorial approach for calculating rail-fly connectivity index in India based on fuzzy logic

Multi-modal transport is becoming prominent amongst Indian Passengers due to the advance of low-cost air travel, increasing disposable income and connectivity between rail, bus and air across various cities. Indian cities are classified across various tiers based on population and economic growth. In this paper, we propose to apply a model inspired by the gravity model to assess the connectivity potential for multi-mode transport with Rail and Air in India using unstructured and semi-structured data retrieved from various data sources. We have clustered the cities based on their proximity using service network design methodologies, empirical analysis of the datasets and applied the model to arrive at a weight-based approach for estimating a connectivity index between cities. There are challenges in proposing such models considering the diversity of Indian city characteristics like demographics, economy, growth potential, existing air and train connectivity, nature of activities like business, tourism, and other niche aspects. We have applied a novel approach using the fuzzy logic technique to calculate the weights of the identified characteristics and illustrated the index for few routes in western and southern clusters.