Kilometers per Vehicle per Day (kpvpd)
This indicator provides a measure of vehicle productivity. A vehicle should be used as intensively as possible, provided that passenger demand is sufficient to cover the direct costs of operation. A high kpvpd figure indicates intensive use, but gives no indication of the viability of the kilometers operated, and therefore does not necessarily imply optimum usage of a vehicle in economic terms. Wasteful or unnecessary use, even though it increases utilization, should obviously be kept to a minimum.
Vehicles are not used every day, and therefore it is important to distinguish between kilometers operated by a bus in the course of a day’s work, and average daily kilometers over a year; the latter is more easily calculated, and therefore is the figure which is most commonly used. If, for example, vehicles are available for only 85% of the time, the average daily kilometer figure, if calculated from the annual figure, must be divided by 0.85 to give the actual daily kilometers operated by each vehicle when it is used. It is also important to be clear as to whether the calculation is based on the number of vehicles owned, licensed or operational. Normally the most appropriate measure in this context is the number of kilometers operated daily per licensed vehicle. When calculating this indicator, it is essential that the definition is clear, and applied consistently.
Kilometers per vehicle are influenced by operating speeds, proportion of idle to running time, and hours of operation each day. In an urban operation, speeds are affected by the number of stops, time taken by passengers boarding and alighting, and delays due to traffic congestion. Urban buses on all day service will normally operate between 150 and 300 kilometers per day, but where a proportion of the fleet is operated at peak periods only the average kilometers per vehicle will be lower than this. Typical figures will be between 100 and 200 per day; substantially higher figures are achieved in some cities, while in others much lower figures are achieved.
