The Problem

The Crisis of Mobility in Mumbai

Every rapidly urbanising city in India today faces a crisis of sustainable mobility. No Indian city is more famous for – and dependent on – its public transportation than Mumbai. Unlike its neglected and overburdened suburban railways, the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply & Transport (BEST), the oldest and largest bus company in the country, is one of the few civic agencies in India which has kept up with the rapid pace of urban expansion. Serving around 40 lakh commuters and covering 7 lakh kilometres every day, the ubiquitous red buses of the BEST are one of the city’s most-loved icons.

Our challenge is defined by a simple question faced by every commuter on an almost daily basis – which bus goes to my destination? The BEST is a vast city-wide-web connecting millions of commuters every day, with cheap, efficient and mostly reliable services throughout Greater Mumbai. But the BEST’s “hardware” of buses, routes and stops is vastly superior to its “software” for communicating and interacting with its commuters. Basic information about routes, schedules, and stops is scarce or unavailable in public spaces. Physical stops only indicate their name and routes served – unless one is at a junction or depot where some signs are posted. The BEST’s “hardware-centric” approach forces urban commuters to adopt a rural mentality, sharing information by word-of-mouth. Regular commuters memorise a handful of routes to common destinations. But for indirect or unfamiliar routing, commuters must rely on the advice of strangers, or improvisation and guesswork.

The public is literally left to their own devices, making split-second transport decisions stressful and wasting valuable time. Travelling by rickshaws or taxis costs five to ten times more than an average bus fare. Those who can’t afford to pay this premium must simply wait and watch, in ignorance of when the next bus will arrive (if ever). Impatience and lack of information widen a social divide where the rich can bypass the system by congesting and polluting the roads with cars, and the poor pay the price of increased traffic. The stress of road travel frequently erupts in widespread rage against the whole network, and aggression against imagined enemies of mobility. In Mumbai this crisis has recently inspired anti-poor media campaigns to boycott rickshaws and taxis which refuse to ply to the exact destinations demanded by impatient commuters. Positive efforts to democratise mobility are so far absent, and the use of “smart” technologies to improve commuting is in an early stage in urban India.

Partial fixes can now be found in mobile “smartphones” which allow custom application programming. There are now many useful “apps” for accessing transport information in Mumbai, including rail timetables, bus routes, and taxi and rickshaw fare calculators. The growing popularity of these apps is encouraging, but also shows that public infrastructure cannot be run on proprietary software, or cater solely to elite smartphone users. Diverse transit apps are available from various vendors for different handsets and mobile platforms. These are all built without common standards or open source software code, which allow users and programmers to incorporate frequent schedule and route changes by BEST, or updates and improvements to features and usability. These applications remain out of the reach of the average commuter who does not have a smartphone or data plan, or the know-how to install custom apps.

BEST’s own efforts to harness technologies have, until recently, been ill-conceived. Smartcard systems which required swiping at entries and exits failed due to overcrowding, technical glitches, and because the system bypassed the bus conductors, who play multiple roles as ticket agent, crowd manager and guide to lost commuters. Another questionable investment are the “BEST-TV” LCD panels now installed in the majority of buses, broadcasting local advertising and entertainment to a captive audience of commuters. Celebrity gossip, local advertising, poorly produced documentaries, and reruns of old serials are repeated in an endless loop. Many BEST-TV screens have been vandalised, or their speakers deliberately disabled by commuters or conductors annoyed by the noise.

Buses remain a vital part of any urban transport network, and are today more important than ever, as Indian cities expand rapidly along new highway and road corridors. The dizzying expansion of private vehicles in urban India, and state agencies’ obsession with building fly-overs and bridges in the name of “decongestion” only generates more traffic and pollution, further degrading public space and reducing mobility for all citizens. Pro-car policies have skewed public investment priorities. Where new transit systems are planned, they are in capital-intensive metro and mono-rails which selectively link or bypass existing networks, rather than regenerating or enhancing existing infrastructure. Our challenge is to develop low-cost, innovative solutions to this crisis. In this effort, everyone who uses the public space of streets and roads, whether rich or poor, is a stakeholder.