BENGALURU: Indian cities need to move beyond isolated transport projects and develop connected mobility networks combining public transport, walkable streets, reliable last-mile connectivity and greater participation from employers, speakers at the Mobility Symposium 2026 said on Thursday.
The third edition of the symposium, hosted by MoveInSync, brought together city administrators, policymakers, corporate leaders and mobility experts from Bengaluru, Cyberabad and Ahmedabad to discuss ways to make daily travel more accessible and resilient.
For Bengaluru, Greater Bengaluru Authority Chief Commissioner Maheshwar Rao identified increasing bus availability and improving pedestrian infrastructure as key priorities. “Most important: increase the number of buses on the road. We are aiming to bring closer to 3,000 more buses in the city,” he said.
Rao also stressed the need for wider footpaths and better pedestrian access, besides urging employers to encourage public transport use through incentives. He called for technology park owners to work with authorities to improve transport access to workplaces.
The discussions also focused on climate resilience. Rao said Bengaluru needed a long-term approach to urban drainage and outlined preliminary plans to identify locations for public heat shelters.
Ahmedabad city administrator Banchhanidhi Pani highlighted multimodal integration, single ticketing and journey planning, along with measures to protect transport routes from flooding and improve commuter comfort during extreme heat.
MLA Sharath Bache Gowda called for formalising transport networks in rapidly growing towns around Bengaluru. “My request or my takeaway from this would be: we need to formalize the kind of transport infrastructure which towns and municipalities have,” he said, pointing to costly and unorganised last-mile journeys between bus stations and homes.
