Mid-Day Opinion: Indian cities must actively shape travel behaviour

Volunteers create awareness among commuters about Friday Public Transport Day at the Bandra-Kurla Complex Metro station in Bandra East on June 12. Pic/Satej Shinde

In June, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's austerity appeal brought an important-yet-overlooked aspect of urban mobility into the national conversation. He urged citizens, public representatives, and government officials to reduce petrol and diesel consumption by using public transport wherever feasible. The appeal recognises that the future of urban mobility depends not only on building infrastructure but also on the travel choices people make every day.

For years, India has been investing in urban transport at an unprecedented scale, expanding Metro networks, building expressways, modernising bus fleets, and attempting to create more integrated mobility systems. Yet amid all this investment, one fundamental question often escapes attention: what persuades someone to choose public transport?

Congestion is often described as an engineering problem, but it is equally a behavioural one. Every morning, millions of commuters make an individual decision about how they will travel to work. Along with travel budgets, that decision, for a large section of the urban community, is also being shaped by how long the journey will take, whether it will be reliable, how much walking is involved, whether the last mile feels safe, and whether changing modes of transport adds uncertainty to an already busy day.

As incomes rise and private vehicle ownership continues to grow, these decisions increasingly favour personal vehicles. Roads, however, cannot expand indefinitely. Even the widest roads eventually fill up because demand for private vehicles grows faster than the space available to accommodate them. The challenge before Indian cities is, therefore, both improving public transport and making it the preferred mode choice for a larger section of commuters.

Urban transport policy has traditionally focused on increasing supply. More buses, more Metro lines, better roads and new transport infrastructure have always dominated planning discussions. Far less attention has been paid to the demand side of the equation, including where and how commuters are travelling, how commuter behaviour changes, what influences travel choices, and how public agencies can encourage a sustained shift towards more efficient modes of transport. Behavioural change has often been treated as an outcome that will naturally follow infrastructure investments, rather than as an independent objective in itself.

In most Indian cities, responsibility for urban mobility is spread across multiple agencies. One authority manages roads, another operates buses, another oversees the Metro, while pedestrian infrastructure falls under another institution altogether. Employers influence commuting behaviour through workplace incentives and private mobility operators fill important service gaps. Yet, these actors seldom work together towards a shared objective of reducing dependence on private vehicles.

The Friday Public Transport Day initiative at Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) represents an important departure from this fragmented approach. Led by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority, the initiative has brought together the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation, Maha Mumbai Metro Operation Corporation Limited, Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport, the Mumbai Traffic Police, transport providers such as Cityflo and Chalo, major corporate organisations in BKC, and the BKC Moves collective comprising research and civil society organisations. These institutions are collaborating around a common objective: encouraging commuters/employees to experience public transport on a regular working day while continuously improving that experience through coordinated action. Since June 12, the first Friday Public Transport Day, the initiative has seen a massive uptake across government organisations and corporations. There has been a 33 per cent increase in feeder bus services, a 10 per cent increase in Metro ridership and 50+ organisations have participated in the campaign.

The initiative's significance lies in recognising that meaningful behavioural change begins with repeated, positive experiences. Rather than relying solely on awareness campaigns, the initiative combines encouragement with institutional action. As commuters share feedback, agencies respond by strengthening feeder bus services, examining improvements to pedestrian connectivity and bus stops and working with employers to make public transport a more convenient option for their workforce. In doing so, the campaign transforms commuters from passive users into participants whose experiences directly inform policy and operations.

The most encouraging aspect of this experiment is the culture of collaboration it is beginning to foster. Government agencies are working alongside researchers, transport operators are responding to evidence generated on the ground, employers are actively encouraging sustainable commuting, and commuters themselves are helping identify practical solutions to long-standing challenges. This kind of institutional collaboration has long been missing from urban mobility conversations. As Indian cities continue to invest in transport infrastructure, it is worth reiterating that infrastructure alone does not change mobility. It is the people using this infrastructure, and people are far more likely to embrace change when institutions work together to make the better choice the easier one.

OP Agarwal is ex-joint secretary, Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, and is currently a professor of practice at the Indian School of Public Policy. Views expressed are personal.