Paper Title
Consumer Awareness About Road Sector in India and Suggested Approach for Improved Involvement of Citizens in Road Development Programs

Abstract
Over the past one and half decade, India has achieved incredible progress in terms of development of road infrastructure throughout the country. With the success of road development programme in terms of availability of quality road network across country and acceptance of road as a major mode for transportation amongst the road users, it will be valuable to understand road user awareness regarding road transportation system and related road safety aspects. With this objective, a road user awareness survey was conducted through a comprehensively designed web-based objective type questionnaire. This questionnaire was circulated online amongst various road users across the country especially passenger vehicle users. All the satisfactory responses have been analyzed using descriptive analysis and regression analysis. Road users have false belief about their understanding about traffic rules, road network, toll policy related information. It was found that average awareness score of all the respondents is 16 out of 31 questions in the questionnaire (around 50%) which is not good considering 47% of the respondents are from the civil / infrastructure industry which contributed substantially to India’s road development programme. It was found that the awareness level amongst road users is not very good, its average or decent. Awareness level even amongst the road users related to infrastructure industry is not significantly different from normal road users. Regression results reiterates that those who are from civil / infra industry has slightly better awareness than those who are non-industry.The outcomes of the study would be useful to policy makers to understand awareness of passenger vehicle road users and their knowledge related to road network, driving habits, road safety, toll policy, technological initiatives. The findings from the study and recommendations may help to amend policies and various ongoing initiatives in road sector and improve overall experience, awareness and safety of the road users. Keywords - Consumer awareness, satisfaction, infrastructure, road safety