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Seema Patil, a 62-year-old domestic worker in Mumbai, commutes daily from her home in Prabhadevi to Bandra, a distance of just 3.5 kilometres.
In theory, the journey should take no more than 40 minutes by bus, including a short walk to the nearest stop and a direct ride to her employer’s home. But Patil only manages to catch a direct bus around seven days each month. On the other days, she is forced to change buses at Dadar, often waiting long periods for a connection and arriving at her destination one-and-a-half to two hours after she sets out.
“I’ve been doing this journey for the past 13 years and it’s only become more tiring and frustrating,” Patil told Down To Earth (DTE).
She said that bus frequency has reduced over the years, the quality of service has worsened, and increased road congestion has slowed journey times, affecting her health, finances and overall quality of life.
On the days she gets a direct bus, she has the energy to spend time with her daughter-in-law and grandchildren. On other days, she is too exhausted to contribute to household chores.
“During the morning rush, I take a taxi as autorickshaws don’t operate below Bandra. It costs me at least Rs 50 more, on top of the Rs 30 I spend on the bus,” she said. On the return journey, Patil carpools with other domestic workers to split the taxi fare. “Earlier, the direct buses were frequent. Now, I spend almost double the time and money on the same commute,” she said.
Her experience mirrors that of over 350,000 daily commuters who rely on buses run by the Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport (BEST) Undertaking, reflecting the rapid deterioration of public transport services in the city.
According to official data, 2,603 buses currently operate in Mumbai. BEST officials told DTE that another 248 buses are expected to be retired from service by November, potentially deepening the crisis.
The city’s local train network, often called its lifeline, is no more reliable. The situation worsens for those who must combine multiple modes of transport.
Aditya Waghmare, a 29-year-old caretaker, travels from Diva in Thane to Bandra each day — a one-way trip lasting at least 90 minutes. “Local trains are never on time. They’re usually delayed by 15 minutes and in the monsoon that can stretch to 45 minutes,” he said.
He starts his day at 6.15 am with a 700-metre walk to the bus stop. “The bus is always late. If I manage to reach work by 7.45am, it feels like a blessing,” he added.
Nisha Choksi, a university student, noted that wait times for buses often exceed the actual travel time. “It’s painful to realise that half the journey could be saved if only buses were more frequent and trains ran on time,” she said.
Mumbai’s estimated population in 2025 is 26.9 million, with at least 7.56 million commuters using the local rail network daily, according to the Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP) for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), last updated in 2021.
The report, using 2017 as its base year, recorded a decline in the share of bus transport from 26.3 per cent in 2005 to 20.3 per cent in 2017 and projected a further fall to just 9 per cent by 2040.
According to the CMP, 46.9 per cent of all trips in the city were made on foot, with 72.5 per cent of those by schoolchildren and low-income workers — mainly women and children — who cannot afford motorised transport. These walking trips are often linked to public transport use, making pedestrian infrastructure essential to the city’s mobility.
Greater Mumbai, comprising the island city and suburbs, spans just 458 sq km but is among the world’s most densely populated urban areas. The broader MMR, covering 6,328 sq km, includes nine municipal corporations and nine municipal councils.
Yet, transport experts say that in this land-starved city — where public transport must be the backbone — policy has long favoured private vehicles.
Zohra Mutabanna, a specialist in sustainable urban growth and mobility, said the shift began in the 1990s with the construction of flyovers to ease congestion. This coincided with a rise in private vehicle ownership.
According to the CMP 2021, private vehicle use has surged. In 2001, Mumbai had 1.37 million private vehicles (856,008 two-wheelers and 508,811 cars). By 2018, that number had risen to 6.7 million, including 4.7 million two-wheelers and 1.96 million four-wheelers.
In 2024 alone, the Mumbai Central, East and West regions added over 209,000 vehicles. Across these three areas, there are now over 1.3 million vehicles.
“Mumbai needs a high-capacity transit system, but government policy has promoted the lowest-capacity modes instead, choking the city’s mobility,” said Mutabanna.
She pointed to projects such as the coastal road, the Bandra-Versova sea link and new flyovers like those on the Santacruz-Chembur Link Road, all of which cater primarily to cars rather than mass transit.
The mobility expert noted that a train journey from Santacruz to South Mumbai takes around 40 minutes, but the same route by car now takes only 20 minutes. “For many people, time is more valuable than money,” Mutabanna added.
But the surge in private vehicles has led to severe parking shortages. The CMP warned that on-street parking reduces road capacity, causes congestion and interferes with traffic flow. “Improper and insufficient provision of on-street parking also leads to encroachment on legal traffic flow,” it said.
Officials told this reporter that a citywide parking policy is being drafted. “There’s a genuine fear that if parking and traffic issues aren’t resolved, movement in the city will grind to a halt,” a senior state transport official told DTE.
The government is identifying available parking space and evaluating demand. A review meeting is expected later this month.
State data shows that the surge in private vehicle use has increased risks for the most vulnerable road users. According to the Mumbai Road Safety Annual Report 2023, two- and three-wheeler occupants (including both drivers and passengers) accounted for 49 per cent of all road crash deaths that year, while pedestrians made up 44 per cent. Together, vulnerable road users like pedestrians, motorcyclists, three-wheeler occupants and cyclists comprised a staggering 95 per cent of all fatalities.
For the third consecutive year, deaths among two- and three-wheeler riders surpassed pedestrian fatalities. The report attributes this to a modal shift towards motorcycles, driven by severe mobility restrictions during the pandemic, with more people using them for logistics and daily travel, thereby increasing motorcyclists' exposure to risk.
Of the 180 deaths recorded, 163 were two-wheeler riders and 17 were three-wheeler (autorickshaw) occupants.
The government is considering raising parking charges and imposing congestion fees on vehicles entering from neighbouring cities such as Nashik, Pune and Surat, an official said.
Vehicular pollution contributes 16 per cent of Mumbai’s fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions — behind marine emissions (26 per cent) and secondary aerosols (22 per cent).
Officials claim public transport is being strengthened. “We’ve increased the number of local train coaches from nine to 15,” one says. But commuters report little tangible improvement.
Between January 2014 and May 2025, 6,760 people died and over 14,000 were injured after falling from Mumbai’s overcrowded trains, according to Government Railway Police data cited by news agency PTI.
Three metro lines have been introduced, though they remain only partially operational. Metro Line 1 (Versova-Andheri-Ghatkopar) carries around 660,000 passengers a day, but limited frequency and four-coach trains hinder its capacity.
Other lines now in use include Dahisar (East) to Andheri (East), Dahisar (East) to DN Nagar and parts of the Cuffe Parade-BKC-Seepz-Aarey corridor. A pod taxi has also been proposed between Bandra and Kurla to ease station congestion.
A 2023 policy brief by analyst Srikavya Peri of policy research group Artha Global suggested that a fully operational metro system could reduce strain on Mumbai’s buses and trains and attract around half of their current users. However, over 42 per cent of survey respondents said they would only shift to the metro if fares were cheaper and first- and last-mile connectivity improved.
Urban planner Sulakshana Mahajan noted that transport is a complex system with many overlapping layers, from school buses to shared cabs to private cars. “Each mode has its own dynamic. A seamless, integrated system with incentives for public transport and disincentives for private vehicles is the need of the hour,” she said.
Singapore’s model of making car ownership difficult, she said, could work in Mumbai too. “Only a strong and convenient public transport system can prompt a shift away from private vehicles.”
Traffic patterns are fluid and require constant data collection on congestion, behaviour and travel choices. “They vary by time of day, day of week and a host of other factors. All of this must be integrated into a functional transport system,” Mahajan added.
Both Mahajan and Mutabanna agree that despite the odds, Mumbaikars remain willing to use public transport, if it is dependable.
“Only a robust, integrated system like those in developed countries can support a city this dense and space-starved,” said Mutabanna.
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.