Bengaluru needs more buses, walkable streets and formalised last-mile transport: Mobility Symposium

Bengaluru: Bengaluru needs more public buses, better pedestrian infrastructure and formalised last-mile transport as the city seeks to make public transport a more convenient option, speakers at Mobility Symposium said on Thursday.

The symposium, hosted by MoveInSync at Taj West End in Bengaluru, brought together city administrators, policymakers, corporate leaders and mobility specialists to discuss public transport, last-mile connectivity, climate resilience and the role of employers in urban mobility, said the firm in a release.

City administrators from Bengaluru, Cyberabad and Ahmedabad highlighted the need to improve connections between homes, transit stations and workplaces, alongside expanding public transport capacity.


“Most important: increase the number of buses on the road. We are aiming to bring closer to 3,000 more buses in the city,” said Maheshwar Rao, IAS, chief commissioner, Greater Bengaluru Authority.

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Rao also stressed the need for wider footpaths and better pedestrian access to encourage more people to use public transport. He called on employers to promote bus and metro use through incentives and work with technology park owners to improve transport access.

Climate resilience also featured prominently in the discussions. Rao called for a long-term approach to Bengaluru’s urban drainage and said preliminary plans were being considered to identify locations for public heat shelters.

Ahmedabad’s municipal commissioner Banchhanidhi Pani, IAS, spoke about multimodal integration, single-ticketing and journey planning. He also highlighted the need to protect key transport routes from flooding and improve commuter comfort during periods of extreme heat.

The discussions also extended to rapidly growing towns around Bengaluru. Sharath Bache Gowda, member of the Karnataka legislative assembly from Hoskote, called for formalised transport networks in peri-urban towns, pointing to the high cost and unorganised nature of journeys between bus stations and residential areas.

“My request or my takeaway from this would be: we need to formalize the kind of transport infrastructure which towns and municipalities have,” Gowda said.

Corporate participation was another key theme at the symposium. Srinivas Alavilli, in a presentation on corporate commutes, discussed how employers could encourage a shift from private vehicles to public transport through transit benefits and recognition programmes.

“If you have parking as an incentive, why not a metro pass as an incentive?” he said.

Deepesh Agarwal, director and CEO, MoveInSync, said the symposium was started three years ago to bring corporates, policymakers, city authorities and academia together to discuss urban mobility.

“We started three years back with a simple idea to put corporates, policymakers, city bodies and academia in one room and to discuss urban mobility together. That was our goal,” Agarwal said.

He said the event had evolved from a focus on Bengaluru’s traffic and congestion to a broader discussion on resilient and inclusive urban mobility.