Introduction

Transportation has changed significantly throughout the years, starting from the days of animal-drawn carts to today's modernized public transport networks. Excavations at ancient civilization sites have indicated that roadways existed as early as the twenty-fifth to thirty-fifth century BCE. During British colonial rule in India, road networks and transport services were developed for the ease of trading and administration. The advancement of transportation is closely related to the advancement of civilization. With industrialization and urbanization came the need to find new means of transporting people and products from one location to another. Fast settlement of inhabitants in cities and industrial growth drive city expansion. As people reside in areas far from their workplaces, affordable and effective transportation has become one of the necessities of city life. Mechanical energy gradually came to replace animal power. The Calcutta Tramways Company established India's first public transportation system in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata) in 1881, where horses pulled the first tramcars. Steam engines were introduced after a few years to draw tramcars. In 1931, gasoline-powered buses replaced tramcars. Since 1920, public transport by bus has been made available in all major Indian towns. Transportation promotes any country's economic, industrial, social, and cultural growth (Potluri and Tejaswi, 2018).

Transport is a critical piece of infrastructure for the development process. It contributes to a significant portion of India's energy consumption, particularly petroleum products. With economic and population expansion, consumption is anticipated to rise further; increasing industrialization, urbanization, and agricultural development is likely to increase freight and passenger transit; and greater real wages will promote leisure-related travel. Currently