Mobility Paradox in Small Cities

Parking Lots Built on Footpaths: Car-NMT Paradox in Smaller Cities

Mobility in India’s smaller cities is paradoxical. Urban plans and infrastructure policies have been prioritising cars, while ignoring the fact that around 60% of the people in smaller cities rely on walking or cycling to get around and only 3% rely on cars. In Gwalior, for instance, two out of five people get around just by walking. If we include cycling (both of which fall under Non-motorised transport), three out five people in Gwalior depend on these modes for daily travel. In Udaipur half of the population rely on walking.

Meanwhile, infrastructure for walking and cycling remains neglected. Sidewalks are either missing or crumbling, and cycle tracks often exist only on paper. Chandigarh, once proud of its 200 km of dedicated cycle tracks, has seen them fall into disrepair; some are blocked by bollards, others taken over by vendors or turned into parking spaces. This pattern repeats across many cities. With poor infrastructure, road accidents involving pedestrians and cyclists remain high. Without safe spaces to walk or cycle, people are forced to share roads with motor vehicles, putting them at serious risk.

Is High-Cost Transit Undermining Affordable Mobility? 

More recently, smaller cities have invested (or have been planning to invest) in expensive mass transit projects, but their success has been a hit and a miss. In Kochi, for example, the 2024 draft Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP) was criticised for prioritising costly metro projects while overlooking accessible options like e-rickshaws. Experts warned that sidelining e-rickshaws would make daily commuting harder. Likewise, Jaipur’s metro was launched in 2015, with the hope of transforming urban transport. However, nearly a decade later, it covers just 12 km and serves only 50,000 passengers daily, even though the city has 4 million residents. Hyderabad metro has been termed as ‘dead burden’ due to low ridership, and its operations have caused financial strain on the operators. 

Informal Mobility: What We See vs What We Don’t

While there has been a push for expensive metro systems, smaller, informal affordable transport solutions are being sidelined in the absence of other reliable public transport options. The disparity in bus availability across India is stark. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) recommends a minimum of 40-60 buses per lakh population, yet cities like Lucknow provide only seven buses per lakh, while Bangalore offers 45. With a glaring mobility infrastructure gap for NMTs and public transport modes, informal mobility modes have stepped in to fill the gap in smaller cities. In Guwahati, where half of all trips are shorter than 4 km, e-rickshaws have been banned from 56 routes, even though they are an essential part of the transport network. In fact, for the city of Guwahati, there are 47 IPTs per 1,000 people and less than 1 bus (0.79) per 1,000 people.

Yet, these modes are often villainised in multiple discourses and are blamed for congestion, pollution, and disorderly roads. In other discourses, IPT operators are micro-entrepreneurs who sustain mobility in small and mid-sized cities. Some cities, like Nadiad (Gujarat), have even seen IPT evolve into a near-formal transport system, where public transport is non-existent. 

In a city like Shillong, where public transport currently accounts for only 11% of trips but aims to reach a 30% share by 2030, IPTs play a crucial role, catering to 41% of the city's travel demand. With public buses being scarce, shared tempos operate on hyper-local knowledge, optimising routes in ways that large transport agencies often struggle to match. Far from being chaotic, this informal mobility network is a finely tuned system that sustains daily life and fills critical gaps in urban transport.

Speed is Thrilling and Killing

The preference for cars and disregard for the dominant and preferred modes of transport in India’s smaller cities may also have translated into a silent safety crisis. While the transport infrastructure is being made to support fast-moving traffic, issues such as poor road design, lack of traffic regulation, unchecked speeding, and rampant wrong-side driving are being witnessed in cities like Amritsar, Tiruchy, Puducherry and many others. Illegal U-turns, overloaded auto-rickshaws, and blind curves without warning signs make everyday commuting risky. Traffic laws are weakly enforced, especially in cities like Ranchi, where decent functional traffic posts are absent and traffic police are understaffed. This means that enforcing even the most basic road safety measure—like checking overloaded vehicles or regulating auto stands—falls to general police units, who already have a backlog of cases.

Data reveals that road accident fatalities are higher in smaller cities and towns. In Uttar Pradesh, districts like Mahoba, Lalitpur, and Shravasti have recorded a 200% increase in road accident deaths over the past year. Similar trends exist in the cities across Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Rajasthan. In 2024, as many as 24,000 people had lost their lives in UP alone.

Another contradiction emerges as vehicles meant to maximise commuter capacity are becoming danger zones through illegal modifications. IPTs, designed for high passenger turnover, are often illegally modified to carry more passengers, as seen in Nagpur, compromising safety with sudden stops or sharp turns. This issue is further aggravated by understaffed traffic police and RTOs, where smaller violations slip through regulatory cracks. For instance, black-tinted windows, once associated with crime in metros, are now prevalent in smaller cities such as Ranchi. In Shillong, ministers and MLAs are defying the Supreme Court’s directive against tinted glass, with the exemption reportedly issued based on a "verbal order from the top." Even government officials in Mysuru use tinted windows, highlighting the widespread disregard for regulations.

Contradictions and Misalignments in Policy Frameworks

The policy frameworks regulating transport and mobility in smaller cities also exemplify the tension between accessibility and safety. Although the National Urban Transport Policy (NUTP) of 2014 acknowledges the role of IPT, there is no uniform national guideline for regulating their permits. Open permit systems encourage accessibility but contribute to congestion. Meanwhile, restrictive closed systems cap the number of permits but limit transport availability. Policies such as AMRUT and amendments to the Motor Vehicles Act still fail to fully address IPT integration into urban mobility frameworks. In Nagpur alone, about 25,000 auto rickshaws operate, yet only 9,500 drivers hold permits. Additionally, over 500 six-seater auto rickshaws continue to ply despite RTO orders to scrap them.

While the U.P. Motor Vehicles Rules, 1998 allow restrictions only on speed and areas of operation; several cities in Uttar Pradesh have seen A/RTOs impose bans on the registration of new e-rickshaws. However, the Allahabad High Court later scrapped these bans, highlighting that such restrictions exceeded the legal scope. These regulatory overreaches disproportionately impact those who cannot afford private vehicles or long commutes, undermining access to flexible, affordable transport.

In another instance, in Bhopal, a September 2024 ban on e-rickshaws transporting school children cited safety concerns but ignored the reliance on these vehicles due to inadequate public transport. At the same time, the central government exempted e-rickshaws from acquiring RTA permits, keeping them outside the purview of formal travel zones and fare regulations. This highlights a fundamental contradiction in policy. While e-rickshaws are encouraged as an accessible transport mode, they remain largely unregulated, leading to inconsistent enforcement and operational challenges. Without a clear framework for integrating IPT into urban transport planning, such fragmented policies risk worsening congestion and reducing mobility options rather than improving them.

In Jaipur, the zone segregation policy for e-rickshaws, implemented in August-September 2024, has highlighted significant gaps in understanding the specific mobility needs of smaller cities. The government allocated 40,000 e-rickshaws to six zones, yet the city already has 45,000 registered e-rickshaws, and the absence of a scrapping policy has left thousands of extra vehicles on the streets. This misalignment between planning and reality has led to increased congestion rather than resolving urban mobility challenges. The situation underscores the need for demand-based, city-specific transport planning rather than one-size-fits-all regulations.

Another pressing issue is the lack of parking spaces. Authorities are quick to impose "No Parking" zones but fail to provide alternatives, forcing vehicles onto roads and exacerbating congestion. For example, in Chandigarh, parking woes persist despite proposals for solutions that remain on paper. The city has long struggled with inadequate parking infrastructure, with vehicles occupying roads due to the absence of sufficient parking facilities.

Rethinking Mobility: The Future of Small Cities

Smaller cities do not need to replicate the mistakes of larger cities and can instead learn from them. Instead of scaled-down versions of car-centric planning, they can provide models for alternative mobility solutions that work with existing informal networks.

Currently, only approximately 1 city out of 10, with populations above 1 lakh, has formal bus services, and informal and non-motorised modes of transport are not peripheral but the mainstream modes in these cities. Hence, rather than marginalising IPTs and NMTs, cities should formally integrate them into transport planning, implement better road safety regulations, and invest in pedestrian and cycling infrastructure.

Several Indian cities are trying to integrate IPTs into urban mobility. Bhubaneswar’s Mo E-Ride treats e-rickshaws as a separate mode for last-mile connectivity while promoting social inclusion. Meanwhile, its Capital Region Urban Transport (CRUT) network integrates e-rickshaws and e-buses with Mo Bus services for seamless travel. Kochi's multimodal system, managed by the Kochi Metropolitan Transport Authority (KMTA) is unifying the metro, ferries, private buses, and auto-rickshaws. The consolidation of private bus operators into limited liability companies and auto-rickshaw drivers under the Ernakulam Jilla Auto-Rickshaw Driver’s Cooperative Society (EJADCS) has further streamlined operations. These examples show how IPTs, whether planned separately or integrated with public transport, enhance accessibility, reduce congestion, and improve urban mobility.

However, even as cities invest in metro systems, their success hinges on efficient last-mile connectivity. Surveys show that poor pedestrian infrastructure, unreliable feeder buses, and high last-mile costs significantly impact metro ridership. Without integrating IPTs and improving NMT infrastructure, metros will remain underutilised, failing to provide seamless mobility. Strengthening last-mile solutions through IPTs, pedestrian-friendly designs, and reliable feeder networks is essential to ensure public transport systems effectively serve urban commuters.

The current paradigm and the future vision that policy makers seem to have for mobility in smaller cities point to a broader question about the concept of 'fast mobility.' What is being prioritised—the movement of vehicles or the movement of people? Prioritising human-centered mobility can mean embracing both motorised and non-motorised options,whether formal or informal, along with efficient public transport. The future of mobility in India’s smaller cities depends on recognising and supporting the transport modes that actually move people. 

Smaller cities hold the potential to lead India’s urban mobility shift. The real question is: can they overcome these paradoxes and contradictions?