Bengaluru, a city gridlocked and stranded

B.engaluru’s traffic problem has been a source of public frustration for a long time; Commuters lose an extraordinary number of hours on congested roads. So the latest TomTom report ranking Bengaluru as the second most populous city in the world comes as no surprise. For a city that positions itself as the technology and innovation capital of India, this is an indictment of years of poor mobility planning.

Traffic congestion in Bengaluru is not just a result of increasing population or economic growth. This is the result of planning choices that do not align transport infrastructure with the actual functioning of the city. Data from the Karnataka Transport Department shows that the number of registered vehicles in Bengaluru has risen sharply from around one crore in 2020-21 to around 1.23 crore in April 2025. This growth occurred alongside the concentration of employment in a few large clusters; especially Electronics City, the Whitefield-ITPL corridor and the 17km Outer Ring Road (ORR) stretch, which accommodates thousands of daily commuters. These corridors were not initially prioritized in the city’s public transportation expansion.

Lack of public transportation

The commuting backbone of Bengaluru continues to be the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), which operates 7,067 buses and serves around 48 lakh passengers every day; this is the highest ridership of any city-operated public transport system in India. Despite its scale, BMTC struggles with issues such as declining fleet strength relative to demand, slow average speeds due to mixed traffic, and lack of dedicated bus priority lanes. Pressure on BMTC recently led former Infosys CFO TV Mohandas Pai to suggest that BMTC should be opened to private participation, which met with strong opposition from Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy, who argued that public transport cannot be run for profit. While the Minister’s defense of a publicly operated bus system is valid, BMTC cannot solve the traffic problem without sustained capital investment, bus-first infrastructure and an increase in the number of buses.

Moreover, the metro network in the city could not fill this gap. Construction of the Namma Metro began in 2007 and its first section opened in 2011, with new corridors added over the years. While these increased mobility in the city, Bengaluru’s major employment hotspots were again ignored. This planning gap has been revealed by the extension of the metro’s Purple Line to Whitefield in 2023. Data from Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) showed a sudden increase in the number of passengers by around 2.5 lakh to 3 lakh passengers per day. A similar trend emerged after the Yellow Line to the Electronic City opened in August 2025; Daily ridership on the new line alone exceeded 60,000 within a few weeks. Urban transportation experts noted that the first metro corridors prioritized areas with relatively lower suburban demand, while major employment centers had to wait more than a decade. The result can be seen in the ORR stretch. Despite being the city’s largest employer, ORR will have to wait until 2027 for an operational metro connection.

Wait for suburban trains

Bengaluru has long needed a high-capacity regional rail system. The Bengaluru Suburban Rail Project was finally approved in October 2020, with an ambitious plan to operate trains along four corridors spanning 148 km and 58 stations. The project is proposed to serve around 20 lakh passengers per day. However, recently the deadline for opening the project was pushed from October 2026 to 2030. Moreover, it is known that the last and first mile connections are inadequate in the city. Shared car services are limited, pedestrian infrastructure is inconsistent, and bicycle infrastructure is fragmented. While taxi and auto aggregators have stepped in to fill some gaps, commuters are reporting unavailability of services or sudden increases in fares during peak hours.

The overall fragmentation of the transport network in Bengaluru is further compounded by the de-empowerment of the Bengaluru Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA). Designed as a higher body to coordinate transportation planning between institutions, BMLTA has not yet functioned as an effective decision-making authority. It seems that without regulatory intervention in the broader mobility framework, aggregators become unreliable when demand is highest.