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Chennai is set to unveil a “comprehensive mobility plan” (CMP), a 25-year roadmap designed to shape its urban transportation landscape. Expected to launch this year, the CMP will guide policymakers in tackling critical issues like insufficient public transportation as well as escalating traffic congestion, and air pollution.
This transportation master plan is being prepared by the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA), a nodal agency established by the Government of Tamil Nadu. The Union Ministry of Urban Development’s National Urban Transport Policy 2006 recommended that cities with population of a million or more should create a Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) to facilitate co-ordinated planning, implement urban transport programmes and manage integrated urban transport system.
“The document will focus on improving public transportation, especially buses, and upgrading non-motorised transportation,” Jeyakumar, Member Secretary of CUMTA, told Down To Earth (DTE). Previously, DTE explored the current state of various transportation modes in Chennai, including buses, suburban trains, private vehicles and non-motorised transport, through discussions with experts and residents. This final installment of the series delves into policies addressing the city's urban mobility challenges, air pollution, and future directions.
As per latest data on the CUMTA website, 23.8 per cent of resident’s travel by bus, rail and metro, 44.2 per cent by car and 26.5 per cent by walking and cycling. The Chennai Metropolitan Area, spanning 5,904 square kilometres, supports an estimated population of 14.5 million in 2023.
The vehicle population alone in CMA is 9.20 million in 2022, according to data shared by the regional transport office. This means there are nearly two vehicles for every three people in the city, according to the nonprofit the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy India (ITDP).
Vehicular emissions is one of the major sources of air pollution in Chennai city. While the city's annual particular matter 10 or PM 10 (particles with a diameter of 10 micrometres or less, which are large enough to settle in the lungs and cause respiratory issues) concentration was more than 90 microgrammes per cubic meter (µg / m3) in 2010-2013, the city managed to reduce this to 48 µg/m3 in 2020-21, according to the 2021 revised Action Plan For Control Of Air Pollution In Million Plus City Of Tamil Nadu. This, however, is still higher than the World Health Organization standard of 15 µg / m3 but less than India’s National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) of 60µg / m3.
A 2024 Greenpeace study found that PM10 levels in Chennai in 2023 were four to five times higher than the revised WHO standards, while eight locations showed an annual average of PM10 slightly higher than NAAQS standards.
As for the annual average particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5), seven locations showed values that were five to six times higher, and one location had eight times higher than the revised WHO standards in 2023. But when compared to the NAAQS standard, only one location in the city breached the limit in the same year.
Chennai is one of the 131 non-attainment million-plus cities under the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in 2019 by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India to tackle air pollution. In 2022-23, the city achieved a performance score of 75 (average) among the 49 cities that received direct funding from the 15th Finance Commission grant.
As part of NCAP, Chennai released its action plan in 2021 to tackle air pollution, including from vehicular emissions. These plans included restricting plying and phasing out of commercial diesel vehicles that are 15 years old, strengthening and encouraging public transport services, preventing parking in non-designated areas, introducing cleaner fuels like Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) or Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for vehicles, installing CNG stations within city, promoting and operationalising e-vehicles and rickshaw, introducing cycle tracks along the roads, introducing new electric buses (with proper infrastructure facilities such as charging stations) and CNG buses for public transport, to name a few.
In its 2025 budget, the Tamil Nadu government announced that 700 diesel buses will be converted to CNG buses at a cost of Rs 70 crore. Further, 950 new electric buses will be deployed in Chennai for public use from this year onwards to address air pollution. “Merely adding a few hundred buses is not sufficient, as they will only replace the ageing fleet. The city needs to add thousands of buses and ensure that there are sufficient buses to reach every corner and meet everyone's mobility needs,” Shreya Gadepalli, founder and managing trustee of UrbanWorks, a Chennai-based non-profit, explained.
Other plans are expected to be rolled out. “Vehicular pollution from vehicles has been drastically reduced. The scrapping policy is under evaluation. Once this is rolled out, Chennai’s pollution levels might do down even further,” R Kannan, member secretary of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board, told DTE. “We are taking action in phasing out old vehicles.”
"A scrapping policy can incentivise the transition from end-of-life, polluting internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to cleaner electric vehicles," opined Venugopal AV, programme manager for Healthy Streets & Partnerships at ITDP India.
Tamil Nadu’s Electric Vehicle Policy 2023 aims to have at least 50 per cent of its roads covered by electric cars by 2025, including two-wheelers, three-wheelers and commercial vehicles.
"The state requires a significant expansion of public charging facilities to cater to the growing demand and several efforts are already underway to scale up charging infrastructure and accelerate EV adoption. These initiatives aim to address range anxiety and make electric vehicles a more practical and appealing choice for users," Said Sooraj EM, deputy manager, transport systems, ITDP.
Public transportation isn't universally preferred. “People who use public transport have no choice and is affordable to many,” Venugopal said. To encourage people to move from private to public transportation he recommends that the city has to improve its first and last mile connectivity and coverage and frequency of buses. This necessitates changing the current approach of prioritising private transport over public.
So far, the government has focused on widening roads, building flyovers to ease congestion, allowing cars and bikes to be parked anywhere (including on pavements), not cracking down on encroachments (parked vehicles, shops, garbage etc) on pavement, read a 2022 newsletter by the Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group, a Chennai-based non-profit. “Flyovers are short-term measures while getting buses is a long-term one,” Venugopal explained. tea
One way to improve the overall public transport system of buses would be implementing a high-quality Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, according to ITDP. BRT enables fast and efficient service that may include dedicated lanes, busways, traffic signal priority, off-board fare collection, elevated platforms and enhanced stations.
ITDP emphasised that BRT’s physically separated bus lanes are crucial, as painted “bus-only” lanes are easily encroached upon by private vehicles. In India, the BRT is operating in 10 cities with three projects in the pipeline.
However, issues such as public opposition due to reduced road space and accidents, lack of funding, inefficient infrastructure and planning have been identified as barriers in the country. Although Ahmedabad claims to be the best BRT in India, it has been consistently running in losses, according to the Bus Rapid Transit in India — A Compendium Report from the International Centre for Environment Audit Sustainable Development under the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. “Despite being the second-largest population globally, and most people depend on public transportation, BRT ridership in India is significantly low than in Latin American countries and China,” read the report.
CUMTA recommended that Chennai first increase its bus fleet before implementing the BRT system. Jeyakumar also recommended that the Southern Railways develop a business model for urban mobility to improve its services and increasing uptake. “In the last 10 years, the Southern Railways has not increased the number of suburban services. They do not have a business plan for urban transport despite having one for freight and intercity transport,” he said. "They could provide a better service and increase the rate marginally. The railways can ask for better bus and IPT services to provide connectivity to railway stations and increase patronage.
While CUMTA is in the last stages of completing the CMP, it has already released its parking policy in January 2025 after the need for it was highlighted in the previous version of CMP released in 2019. The 2019 CMP identified areas experiencing acute shortage of parking supply in commercial areas of Anna Salai, Periyar EVR Salai, T Nagar, Purasawalkam, George Town, Nungambakkam, Adyar and Mylapore.
Lack of on-street and off-street parking management has led to haphazard parking, vehicles encroaching on footpaths, unsafe road conditions and inefficient traffic movement, reads the 2025 Parking Policy. “Parking on streets is free except in a few places. The primary purpose of roads is mobility? Why is a third or half of the road space being allowed to be occupied by haphazard and free parking?” Gadepalli explained. “Private, market-priced parking is the only way to accommodate private vehicle parking.”
The parking policy views parking supply as a valuable real estate space and not as a free right. It creates the shift from free to paid parking, promoting public and non-motorised transport. The policy recommends the development of area-level parking management plans at the neighbourhood level which allocate on-street parking based on demand and space availability.
The demand-based pricing system could discourage unnecessary car or bike use, encouraging people to choose more sustainable options, like public transport or cycling, according to CUMTA.
The pilot for the parking policy is being prepared for Anna Nagar. “We selected Anna Nagar because it has three metro stations. It is a commercial and a residential area. The area experiences congestion due to parking issues,” Jeyakumar noted.
The pilot will manage on-street parking on 25 km of roads. “The tender is getting ready and by September we should have a parking vendor onboard. The experience of the pilot will show us how the policy can be implemented on ground,” Jeyakumar shared.
The plan recommends the use of both ground teams and technology to manage parking efficiently across the neighbourhood. The policy also proposes a single agency to collect fees and carry out enforcement.
The on-street hourly parking fee, approved by Greater Chennai Corporation, is Rs 40 for cars, Rs 20 for bikes and Rs 60 for commercial vehicles. If this is successful, Jeyakumar added, GCC can replicate the same model in different places in the city.
Other experts commend the policy, but call for strong enforcement. “Chennai's parking policy is good, but it needs to be put into practice. Unless it is implemented, the parking problem will not be solved. Further, revenue from parking fees can be invested in augmenting and enhancing the bus fleet,” Gadepalli said.
Urban planning needs urban and transport planning to go hand in hand, explains Jeyakumar. Chennai has seen 70.35 per cent expansion in urban areas, mainly towards the suburban periphery of Chennai between 1991 and 2016, according to a 2017 paper published in the journal Entropy. The urban area extent, it added, is expected to increase to 85.87 per cent in 2027.
ITDP recommended that satellite towns be planned to distribute load. A satellite town is a settlement located near an urban centre, providing housing and amenities for residents who work in the main city.
Another expert recommended transit-oriented development to create compact, walkable communities living around high quality train system. This can reduce urban sprawl or unrestricted growth on the outskirts, according to an academic expert, who spoke to DTE on condition of anonymity. Urban sprawl refers to the uneven development along the highways, surrounding the city or in the peri-urban region resulting in the destruction of agricultural land and ecological sensitive habitats.
Sea-land breeze helps the city disperse pollutants into the sea. Keeping this in mind, the academic expert recommends reducing high rise developments near the seashore as it could choke sea breeze. “There should be enough setback (open) space near the sea,” they added.
“From the 1970s, Chennai has had a masterplan and, yet we have allowed sprawls. We should have stopped that and allowed compact development,” he explained. Buildings with high floor area ratio can accommodate more people, he added. This, however, will require increasing infrastructure, water supply, sewage treatment, electricity supply.
However, without a proper planning and coordination, compact development could create a string of issues like overdevelopment, air quality problems, noise pollution or unused and unprofitable development, read a factsheet from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. “We should have taken steps to reduce congestion and air pollution 20 years ago. But it is not too late for Chennai to turn things around. We are growing. We have funds. It is only a matter of political will,” the academic expert added.
This article is part of our series on how India moves, which looks at the relationship between air quality and human mobility in cities and towns. This story is the fifth in the Chennai mobility series. Also read the first, second, third and fourth parts.