Indian Transport Policy Is Missing The Bus

Sample this: Just 9.2% of India’s urban workers rely on buses and 5% on metro, suburban rail, monorail, and trams for the daily commute to their workplaces, according to the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS). Released in October, it was India’s first survey on household travel.

The survey revealed growing dependence on personal vehicles, especially two-wheelers. 

O.P. Agarwal, former bureaucrat and principal author of NUTP-2006, told The Secretariat, “There is a need to review the policy to understand why the desired outcomes have not been realised and then frame a new policy."

The Central government had issued the NUTP in April 2006 to address the problem of traffic congestion and air pollution in cities by encouraging the use of public transport. 

It came months after the launch of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). In the past two decades, a slew of initiatives such as the PM-eBus Sewa and the rapid expansion of the metro rail network have been undertaken to augment public transport infrastructure in urban areas, with massive investments by the Central and state governments.

But the objectives of NUTP have not been fully met. “The thrust of the NUTP was to reduce congestion by nudging people to switch from personal vehicles to public transport. That clearly has not happened. The use of motorised vehicles has increased even faster,” Agarwal said. 

Dependence On Personal Vehicles

The survey was conducted between July 2025 and June 2026 by the National Statistics Organisation under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). It covered 20.34 lakh people across 4.92 lakh households in 14,274 villages and 10,377 urban blocks.

The overall use of public transport in India for work-related travel - rural and urban - is just about 15%, it showed.

In urban areas, 58% of workers rely on personal vehicles — two-wheelers (52.3%) and cars (5.7%) —to go to work, according to the survey.

In cities such as Delhi, 42.8% of workers use two-wheelers and 10.3% use cars for daily commute to work, even though the national capital has the country’s largest metro network (416 km) and one of the biggest bus fleets (nearly 7,000 buses) among Indian cities.

The usage of two-wheelers and cars for work commute in urban areas is above the national average of 58% in states such as Mizoram (95.1%), Goa (82.3%), Telangana (72%), Rajasthan (70.5%), Tamil Nadu (65.7%), according to the survey.

Two-Wheeler Deaths

“The growing dependence on two-wheelers is a serious concern, as nearly 46% of road accident deaths are of two-wheeler drivers. People are switching to two-wheelers, as it is a faster and cost-effective mode of transport. The only way to reduce the fatalities is to make people switch to public transport,” said Geetam Tiwari, emeritus professor, Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Centre at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT) Delhi.

The Road Accidents in India 2024 report by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways says that of the 1,77,175 road accident deaths reported in 2024, two-wheeler riders accounted for 81,780 (46.2%). This was followed by pedestrians, who accounted for 36,526 deaths (20.6%).   

According to the NHTS, a sizeable percentage of people walk to their workplaces or educational institutions. About 37% of students walk one kilometre or more to reach schools and colleges, while 28.3% of workers walk to their workplaces in India. 

In urban areas, about 23% of workers use public transport (buses, metro or suburban rail, auto-rickshaws) to commute to their workplaces. About 21.7% of female workers in urban areas use bus as the primary mode to travel to/from their workplace. In states such as Karnataka (34.9%), Keralam (46.8%), and Tamil Nadu (41.1%), the percentage of women using buses is higher than the national average in urban areas.  

“It is not just the number of buses, the problem in Indian cities is about the quality of service provided. If a person can afford a two-wheeler, then he or she will not use a basic public bus service,” said Agarwal 

“There is a need to give people something which is of much higher quality. But this realisation doesn’t seem to have dawned on policymakers. Even now, state governments are focusing on expanding the fleet to improve the service instead of also focusing on the quality of service. People will switch to public transport only if it is comfortable and convenient,” he said.

Need For New Policy

NUTP was aimed at helping cities develop sustainable transport to address the issue of increasing traffic congestion, deteriorating air quality, and an increasing incidence of road accident fatalities.

The policy recommendations, though not binding on states, included integrated land use and transport planning, prioritising public transport, promoting the use of non-motorised modes, setting up Unified Metropolitan Transport Authorities (UMTAs) in all million-plus cities for coordinated planning and implementation of urban transport programmes and projects, integrated management of urban transport systems, and the use of cleaner technology.     

In the past two decades, while several measures recommended in the policy have been implemented, transport experts say a new policy is needed. 

A report by the Indian School of Public Policy (ISPP) in June this year said, “It (NUTP) has not been able to achieve its objectives, partly due to piecemeal implementation and partly due to some aspects not being adequately covered in the policy.”

For instance, while the policy advocated a shift to public transport, it did not "proactively restrain the use of personal vehicles". This measure would have helped "accelerate the shift" to public transport. As a result, motorisation has not slowed down. “…between 2006 and 2025, the number of motor vehicles sold was about 320 million compared to just about 90 million sold in an earlier period of 55 years, from 1951 to 2006. Clearly, motorisation has shown no signs of slowing down and has been growing at an even faster rate,” the report said.

An Integrated Policy?

After the NUTP, the Centre came up with the Metro Rail Policy and Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Policy in 2017. Experts say these should be integrated with the NUTP. 

“A lot of developments have happened in the past two decades, such as TOD, increased use of electric vehicles and the need for public charging infrastructure, and better management of parking spaces. Para-transit has become even more important with the presence of cab and bike aggregators. There is a need to revise the NUTP or come up with a new one so that all these aspects are covered,” said Tiwari.

She also said it was essential to link the national policy to government schemes and grants for states to incorporate it in their planning. “This will compel states and Union Territories to implement the recommendations and encourage the use of public transport,” she said