Mythli, a student at a coaching centre in Saidapet, South Chennai, typically waits several minutes at the bus shelter for her evening commute home. However, on May 17, 2025, her wait stretched to over an hour, understandably making her impatient.
Residing 13 kilometres away in Gerugambakkam, a western suburb, Mythli spends a significant amount of time traveling to her classes. While the morning journey takes an hour, the evening commute sometimes extends to two hours, including walking to the bus shelter, waiting for the bus and the final walk home. "I start at 8 am and only reach home by 7:30 pm, completely exhausted. The heavy traffic congestion makes the journey incredibly long," she shared with Down To Earth (DTE).
For Bushan, a resident of Sholinganallur in South Chennai, the 17 km commute to his workplace in Nandanam usually takes 40 minutes on a good day. “But with traffic, it can easily become a 1.5-hour ordeal,” he told DTE. While he uses the metro to reach Saidapet bus stop, he typically faces at least a 30-minute wait for a bus to his residence.
Travelling is also not easy on the pockets. Bushan spends approximately Rs 1,500 monthly on commuting, with Rs 1,000 allocated to his bus pass. “The traffic is particularly bad on Fridays and weekends,” he noted.
Ganesh, a 47-year-old government employee, commutes 25 km from his home in Manali, North Chennai, to his office in Saidapet. “I leave at 7:30 am to reach the office by 10 am, and then depart at 5 pm, only to arrive home by 9:30 pm,” he shared with DTE.
Similar to Bushan and Mythli, he has to wait at least 30 minutes every day for transportation. “It's incredibly tiring, but what choice do I have? There's no local train service along my route, and while a metro line covers part of the distance, it’s too expensive for me,“ he explained.
He attributed the traffic congestion to the high volume of private vehicles, suggesting that increased public transport usage would alleviate the problem. However, he immediately added that buses are also severely overcrowded, often carrying over 100 people despite a seating capacity of 44, with standing room for 25. He emphasised the urgent need for more buses.
Chennai is the fourth-largest urban economy, thanks to its electronics, manufacturing, automobiles and information technology sectors. Buses have traditionally been the workhorses of public transport in the city. But they have been on the decline in terms of capacity, service quality and mode share, according to a 2025 World Bank report Chennai’s Urban Mobility Transformation.
Chennai falls short of the buses needed to support its residents. In fact, the fleet size has shrunk in the last few years from 3,454 in 2021 to 3,347 in 2023 and 3,392 in 2025 (as of April), according to data available on the website of the Metropolitan Transport Corporation Ltd (MTC), the agency operating public bus service in Chennai.
There were no new buses added in 2021 and 2022. Things improved in 2023 and 2024, with 66 and 715 new buses being added to the road. The number of passengers per day, however, has climbed from 2.87 million in 2021 to 3.33 million in 2025 (till April), showed data from MTC.
Still the ridership has declined from early 2000s. “In 2010, the ridership was nearly 5.5 million, a reduction of 60 per cent than today,” Shreya Gadepalli, founder and managing trustee of UrbanWorks, a non-profit institute based in Chennai. “The number of buses should grow as the population expands,” said Venugopal AV, program manager for Healthy Streets & Partnerships at ITDP India, an organisation that offers technical support on sustainable mobility initiatives in India.
As the buses have not kept pace with the growing population needs, there is a rise in personal vehicle ownership, which has added to traffic congestion. “Bus services have become slower due to congestion on roads and hence transport fewer passengers,” Gadepalli explained.
Chennai — the second best in the country in terms of bus availability — has 30-35 buses for every 100,000 residents, she said. For comparison, cities like London have more than 100 buses per 100,000 residents.
Beijing, she added, has the same rail system as Delhi. But it has 28,000 buses in operation, five times more than Delhi. “These buses have two coaches — so the actual capacity is more than 28,000 buses,” she said.
Sooraj EM, deputy manager, Transport Systems & Electric Mobility at ITDP India, highlighted that Chennai has to double its fleet to support the population and reduce overcrowding in buses. Gadapalli suggested that the city first increase the fleet to 7000 and then eventually expand to 10,000.
Buses plying in Chennai during peak hours (between 8-10 am in the morning and 5-7 pm in the evening) tend to be overcrowded. The Ease of Moving Index — India Report 2022 by OMI Foundation Trust, a policy research and social innovation think tank based in New Delhi showed that 25.17 per cent of respondents felt that buses are overcrowded and reported facing difficulty finding a space to sit or even stand.
Then comes accessibility. Over 60 per cent of the people felt that bus transport was not easily accessible across the city, the survey showed. This indicated that a majority of respondents felt that the metro and trains were more readily available than public buses.
All these factors combined can reduce people’s reliance on public transportation. Government data showed a gradual decrease in bus ridership over the years. The modal share of bus dropped to 22.6 per cent in 2018 from 26 per cent in 2008, according to the 2019 Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP), a guiding document that sets a long-term vision for transportation in Chennai Metropolitan Area (CMA). Modal share is the percentage of travellers using a particular type of transportation. This was 1,189 sq km in 2019 and has since expanded to 5,904 sq km.
In contrast, the modal share of two- and four-wheelers have risen to 29.6 per cent and 7.1 per cent in 2018, from 25 per cent and 6 per cent a decade earlier.
Further, the average time it takes to complete a trip from a point of origin to destination has gone up. The median trip length in CMA has increased from a range of 2-4 km in 2008 to 4-6 km in 2023, according to the World Bank. Inadequate public transport and resultant congestion and air pollution are some challenges faced by CMA, it added.
Then, there is the issue of safety. The 2023 Gender Safety Perception Survey conducted by the Mumbai-based nonprofit Gender Lab showed that 16 per cent of women surveyed in public places and transit points in Chennai reported facing some form of harassment over the preceding three months, including on public buses.
The OMI survey showed that 24.81 per cent of women agreed that bus transport in Chennai is safe from gender-related crime events such as eve teasing and molestation, less than the average of 30.4 per cent in other megacities (Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune-Pimpri Chinchwad).
Further, 25.17 per cent felt safe from pickpockets and other petty crimes in buses, compared to 30.65 per cent average across megacities, the OMI survey showed.
Another challenge faced by Chennai residents is the first and last mile connectivity to public transport. The OMI survey showed that most commuters (57.5 per cent) used intermediate public transport (IPT) modes for first-mile and last-mile connectivity to public transport, which is lower than the average of other megacities at 62.02 per cent. IPT refers to vehicles that supplement the public transport system.
Walking was the second most preferred mode to reach public transport, with 40.39 per cent relying on this travel mode. This is higher than the average of megacities, whose average is 34.8 per cent.
The summers, however, make it difficult for people to walk. “It takes me five minutes to walk to nearest public transport, but I choose to take Rapido, given how sunny it gets in the morning. So I shell out 40 rupees every morning for this,” said Sowmya Ranjan, an accountant in a private company in Mylapore. “Chennai needs to increase the green cover and provide shaded walking space, lay out a continuous footpath, and provide lighting at night to make more streets accessible for people,” Venugopal said.
MTC has also introduced minibus services to cater to the first- and last-mile connectivity needs of passengers at select metro stations operated by the Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL).
Others use shared autos, which can accommodate six to eight people, as IPT. Chennai has 60,000 shared autos, according to a newsletter from Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group (CAG), a non-profit organisation based in Chennai.
The shared autos charge Rs 10-50 — a fare higher than buses, but much lower than the auto rickshaws, according to the 2019 CMP.
However, it added, shared autos do not serve as an IPT system. Instead, they compete with MTC by running on the same routes. “Shared auto routes are market-driven. They are not monitored, so we do not know the routes they ply and how much they charge,” Bezylal Praysingh, associate at ITDP India, told DTE.
Overall, Chennai has to work on its first- and last-mile connectivity. “While some neighbourhoods have good first- and last-mile connectivity to public transport, with accessible footpaths and IPT systems, it needs to be reflected across the city,” Venugopal stressed.
While bus fares are largely affordable in Chennai, there are challenges. Gadapelli says bus fares in Chennai used to be affordable but have now become expensive. On the other hand, Chennai Metro fares used to be significantly more expensive than buses but have been brought down in recent times. Now, she says, metro rates are comparable to bus rides for shorter distances.
For instance, Bakyaraj, a security guard, spends Rs 10 total to commute to and from his workplace in Mylapore, 1km from his residence in Mandaveli. Bhuvan, on the other hand, spends Rs 16 for the metro train between Nandanam and Saidapet, roughly 4 km away.
On the bright side, ordinary, non-deluxe buses are free for women. Jayakodi, a 59-year-old labourer, said she has benefited from the free service. “I get late because of the traffic and I also spend 30 minutes just waiting for a bus. Though this is a problem, I can easily travel across Chennai for free, which is helpful,” she shared.
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 first of the Chennai mobility series. Also read the second, third, fourth and fifth parts.