Public Transport Forum is a citizen collective that brings together civil society groups, youth and social movements, rights-based organizations, urban activists, and researchers working on public transport issues in India. Beginning with our roots in Delhi, we now coordinate efforts across multiple cities to advocate for public transport that is free, safe, reliable, and inclusive. We organise public interventions, conduct research for action, make information about public transport more accessible, and support citizens in demanding the right to mobility they deserve.
Agenda
Our work is organised around four thematic areas that together constitute a vision for public transport and mobility justice in Indian cities. We see these not as isolated issues but as deeply interconnected with struggles for the right to the city, for gender equity, for climate action, and for democratic governance of public goods.
Fare-Free Public Transport
The question of who pays for public transport is fundamentally a question of who the city belongs to. When bus and metro fares eat into the wages of workers, students, and the urban poor, they reproduce the social and economic inequalities in cities. We argue that fare-free public transport is not a "freebie" but a recognition that mobility is a precondition for accessing education, employment, healthcare, and civic life. It is encouraging to see several Indian states already moving towards making buses free for women, students, and other groups, and their experiences demonstrate that this is not utopian but achievable. We work to demand expansion of these schemes to other states, document their impact, build public understanding of their value, and push for universal fare-free travel as the horizon of urban transport policy.
Gendered Accessibility and Safety
Women in Indian cities face a mobility crisis rooted in patriarchal control over their physical movement in public life. Studies estimate that women's mobility rate in urban India is as low as 47%, and nearly half of urban women are not "allowed" to step out alone. Transgender persons and other gender minorities report lack of access to safe public transport. In this context, public transport can either reinforce these constraints or help dismantle them. The design of buses, the location of stops, the timing of services, the presence or absence of lighting and toilets, the behaviour of staff and co-passengers — all of these shape whether women can move freely, safely, and with dignity. Fare is one major barrier but we work on the full spectrum of gendered accessibility, which includes quality infrastructure and safety by design to transform public transport into genuinely inclusive spaces for women and transgender persons.
Connectivity and Reliability
A bus that doesn't come, or comes unpredictably, or doesn't go where people need to go, is not really public transport. For public transport to serve as the backbone of urban mobility, it must be frequent, reliable, and connected. This means adequate fleet sizes, rational route planning, dedicated bus lanes that prioritise public vehicles over private cars, real-time information systems, and integration across modes. It also means attending to "last mile" connectivity for places where people actually live and work. Currently, Indian cities chronically underinvest in buses while pouring resources into metros and flyovers that mainly serve the relatively well-off residents. We advocate for a reorientation of transport planning towards the majority who walk, cycle, and take buses, and for the infrastructural commitments needed to make public transport a genuine alternative to private vehicles.
Public Transport and Related Policy Issues
Transport policy reflects choices about who matters in the city, how public resources are allocated, and what kind of urban future we are building. These choices are nearly always made without public deliberation, details get buried in technical documents, and they are driven by contractor interests rather than commuter needs. We work to make transport governance more transparent and accountable through RTI requests, budget analysis, and public engagement with policy processes. We track the fine print of schemes that can make or break their accessibility, like the recent proposal to replace Delhi's simple pink ticket with a bureaucratic smart card system. We connect transport policy to broader questions of climate justice, urban development, labour rights for transport workers, and the democratic governance of cities.
Research & Action
Workshop · 2024
Citizen Assembly on Public Transport for All
A Citizen Assembly was organised in Bhalswa JJ Colony that was hosted by residents of the area themselves. Public transport in Bhalswa is absent, like in many other informal settlements in Delhi. Therefore, as the Delhi elections 2025 approached, we coordinated this initiative with support from Greenpeace India and Lok Shakti Manch where citizens took the lead in demanding reliable, inclusive, and free public transport with connectivity to every neighbourhood in Delhi.
Policy Document
Citizen's Policy for Affordable Public Transport in India
A comprehensive policy framework developed through citizen consultations, outlining demands and recommendations for making public transport affordable, accessible, and equitable across India.
Report · 2024
Riding the Justice Route
We studied Delhi's fare-free bus (Pink Ticket) scheme using a mixed-method approach, combining survey and in-depth interviews. The study found that the scheme increased women's ridership, reduced the burden of transport expenses, and enabled greater independence in women's physical mobility.
Report · 2023
Halt for Women Bus Users
The aim of this study was to identify impediments women bus users were facing in Delhi after the introduction of the free bus scheme in 2019. Some of the issues encountered by women while accessing public bus transport included buses halting for them at bus stops, experience of discrimination on-board, and sexual harassment.
Dashboard
State of Fare-Free Public Transport across India
A dashboard showcasing the current status of free public transport schemes, concessions and public transport welfare, and some key indicators measuring the state of public transport in Indian cities.
Dashboard · 2024
Delhi Bus Shelter Audit
A citizen audit of 31 bus shelters across 5 Delhi districts. Each stop is scored for overall quality (out of 100) and heat preparedness (out of 10). 1 in 5 South Delhi bus stop locations do not have a designated bus shelter. An ongoing, open data project — contribute your own audit.
Podcast · 2024
Reclaiming the Bus: A Podcast on Public Transport in India
A podcast series exploring public transport issues across Indian cities, featuring conversations with commuters, activists, and researchers about mobility justice, fare-free schemes, and the politics of urban transport.
Report · 2023
Study of Priority Bus Lanes in Bengaluru
We studied the impact of Bengaluru's priority bus lanes on travel experience, time savings, and public transport efficiency.
Report · 2024
Fare-Free Future: Women's Perspectives on Public Bus Transport in Mumbai
In the run-up to Maharashtra state elections, we conducted a rapid survey of more than 500 women at bus stops across Mumbai on prospects of making buses fare-free. We found large-scale support for the idea. Among the key findings: 96% of women demanded the inclusion of fare-free transport in election manifestos.
रिपोर्ट · 2026
कैंपस तक का सफ़र: दिल्ली विश्वविद्यालय में आवागमन और असमानता
155 DU छात्रों का अन्वेषणात्मक अध्ययन जो दर्शाता है कि परिवहन की चुनौतियां महिलाओं और आर्थिक रूप से कमज़ोर छात्रों पर असमान प्रभाव डालती हैं। 72% महिलाओं ने बताया कि बसें उनके लिए नहीं रुकतीं; 62% परिवहन गुणवत्ता से असंतुष्ट हैं।
Report · 2021
Survey of Bus Use in Delhi
A survey of Delhi bus users was conducted by Greenpeace India and Delhi Bus Yatri Union, in association with Sustainable Urban Mobility Network (SUM Net) India. Public Transport Forum was initiated in the follow-up to the study by some of the key people who conducted the research and ran a campaign around it.
Dispatches
Updates on policy developments, legal changes, open letters, and key moments in the public transport movement across India.
Recent Updates on Fare-Free Public Transport in India
Latest developments in fare-free schemes, policy announcements, and movement news from across Indian states.
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