Mobility budgets need an equity push

Congestion in cities like Bengaluru can be traced to a skewed budgeting focus on vehicular movement.

Mobility in India’s largest cities continues to worsen, with urban sprawl, poor quality of roads, insufficient public transport, and an unchecked increase in private vehicle ownership resulting in increased travel times, productivity drops, and reduced air quality. Nowhere is this connection between broken roads and declining quality of life more evident than in Bengaluru.

Over 2,000 vehicles are added to Bengaluru’s roads every day, making it the city with India’s highest private car ownership. Bengaluru has 823 vehicles per kilometre of road – a density that has paralysed movement. A Bengaluru citizen spends the equivalent of 3 days and 23 hours in rush hour traffic annually. This translates to an estimated annual loss of Rs 20,000 crore. Road safety, too, is a grave concern with the occurrence of one pedestrian death every 30 hours.

The solution is straightforward and proven globally. Cities cannot be designed for private vehicles; vehicular congestion cannot be solved by building more roads. Instead, cities must prioritise moving people through walkable roads and robust public transit – a combination of buses, trains, and metro. Tokyo and New York City have demonstrated that investing in public transit and managing vehicle demand, rather than endlessly expanding road capacity, delivers better outcomes for citizens and economies.

Yet, Indian cities continue to invest primarily in auto-centric infrastructure: flyovers, signal-free corridors, and ring roads. The problem is not a lack of solutions, but a failure of budget priorities. An equitable budget would enable balanced distribution of resources to address urban mobility holistically.

The first step is to shift the undeniable political and administrative focus on solving for vehicular movement alone, evident from budgetary allocations at the union, state, and city levels. At the union level, there has been inequitable spending on highways vs urban roads. An estimated Rs 7.9 lakh crore has been spent between 2014 and 2023 to build 23,268 km of highways, and Rs 3.96 lakh crore since 2000 to build 8.35 lakh km of rural roads. This has reduced vehicular travel time between cities by up to 50%, and between rural areas and the nearest urban centres by 25-35%. There has been no similar investment in urban roads.

States, too, do not allocate sufficient budgets for urban roads and pedestrian infrastructure – Uttar Pradesh is a notable exception (the state invested Rs 3,000 crore to redevelop 285 km of urban roads in 17 municipal corporations with a focus on walkability). At the city level, the pattern of disproportionate spending continues. An analysis of Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, and Hyderabad in 2025 shows that on average, 11.8% of city budgets are allocated for mobility infrastructure. Of the entire budget, only 2.98% is earmarked for pedestrian needs and holistic redevelopment of urban roads, with the rest allotted to auto-centric projects. Bengaluru allocated a mere 1.25% for its pedestrian infrastructure; the share was 6.96% for Mumbai, 3.68% for Chennai, and 2.95% for Hyderabad.

An even spread

Solutions must begin with equitable budgets that distribute resources across pedestrian, transit, and vehicular infrastructure. Mobility funding should reflect actual usage patterns, not favour vehicle movement alone. Investing in pedestrian infrastructure moves people faster and improves connectivity to public transport, jobs, and education.

One approach to proportionate allocation: for every rupee invested in auto-centric infrastructure, cities could allocate the same to pedestrian facilities and public transportation. In the 2024 budget, Bengaluru allocated Rs 12,000 crore for the construction of 17 signal-free corridors and Rs 17,698 crore for a 16.7-km tunnel project. Even if Bengaluru matched the tunnel project’s budget with equal investment in footpaths and modern buses, the impact would be transformative. At approximately Rs 3 crore per km for a two-metre-wide paved footpath, Rs 8,849 crore would yield around 2,950 km of walkable paths, covering 20% of the city. Allocating the same amount towards modern air-conditioned electric buses, priced at Rs 2 crore per bus, would allow the procurement of around 4,500 new buses. Bengaluru currently has 6,500 buses operational. This approach would move far more people, far faster.

These budgetary allocations need to be supported with mandatory road design standards – such as Tender S.U.R.E., IRC 86, and 103 – that focus on pedestrian priority, urban designers in engineering departments to implement the guidelines, and procurement reforms for quality construction and road maintenance.

With planning for the 2026-27 budget underway, the newly-formed Greater Bengaluru Authority can pioneer an approach where budgets reflect how citizens actually move, with substantial allocations for pedestrian infrastructure, public transit, and complete streets. For Bengaluru’s residents, this decision could shape the quality of life for decades to come.

(Nithya is Director – Planning and Design, Jana Urban Space Foundation; Venkatakrishnan is a student at IIT Madras)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.