Mumbai, India’s financial capital, which over the past decade has seen a massive IR boost, is now gearing up to build India’s first taxi network: an 8.8-kilometre elevated corridor through the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), the city’s busiest business district.
Built under a $A 1,016-crore public-private partnership model, the system will deploy driverless electric pods for five to eight passengers. Operating on dedicated guideways with 38 stops, these pods will connect Bandra and Kurla railway stations to commercial hubs like Jio World Centre, Bharat Diamond Bourse, SEBI, NSE, etc.
The on-demand pods operate at speeds of up to 40 kilometers per hour, promising zero-emission point-to-point journeys. Construction is likely to begin soon, with operations targeted for around 2027 under the Design, Finance, Build, Operate and Transfer (DFBOT) framework.
“This system will enhance last-mile connectivity, help reduce congestion and provide a new and efficient mode of transportation,” says an official at the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), the nodal agency for the project.
Similarly, Delhi’s November 2025 Urban Mobility Vision proposes setting up taxis in densely populated areas such as Rohini Rithala and Narela.
However, experts warn that taxis, while innovative for specific lanes, will not solve India’s chronic last-mile crisis, which requires more profound and systemic reforms.
The weakest link in a huge system
Over the past two decades, India’s major cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and others – have invested billions in metro rail networks. The Delhi Metro now extends nearly 400 km and continues to expand. Mumbai and Kolkata are also building multiple corridors.
However, the last leg of the journey – the distance from the station to home, office or any other destination – remains chaotic and unreliable.
Commuters leaving metro stations or transit hubs often encounter swarms of e-rickshaws and disorganized shared cars, and crowded intersections and encroaching crosswalks ensure that walking is barely an option. It’s no wonder then that short trips of 1-2 km can take 20 minutes or more during peak traffic hours. For many, this uncertainty negates all the benefits of fast, air-conditioned travel on the metro.
Experts say that this gap is primarily responsible for the increasing congestion on the roads despite the expansion of the metro network in cities, because when the last mile is inconvenient, passengers often prefer or return to private vehicles.
An April 2025 study by the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), titled “Public Transport Services in Neighborhoods: Analysis of the Supply Position of Bus-Based Public Transport in Delhi,” highlights this imbalance. Six out of every ten daily trips in Delhi travel less than 4 km, yet long-distance buses dominate the network. What is even more surprising is that more than 31% of Delhi’s neighborhoods lack a bus stop within 500 metres, meaning that almost one in three to four neighborhoods do not have easy access to public bus services.
Similarly, a survey of Delhi Metro users by the World Resources Institute found that the first and last miles together account for only about 18% of the total travel distance but nearly 40% of the time and 48% of the cost, highlighting the extent to which inefficient access modes distort the overall journey.
Fragmented solutions and failed reforms
Indian cities have tried multiple ways to fix the last-mile problem, but have failed.
Over the years, feeder buses have been introduced by agencies like Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) and Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) to connect stations to surrounding neighbourhoods. Many of these services suffered from low frequency, low ridership, and poor synchronization with metro timings.
Informality took over. While e-rickshaws and shared cars offer flexibility and redundancy, their proliferation has only created chaotic stations, safety risks, and traffic jams. Most operate outside standardized fare systems, without any route rationalization, digital tracking or any service standards.
Non-motorized solutions remain elusive as crosswalks continue to be encroached upon, broken or interrupted; Cycle paths, where they exist, are often fragmented. Public bike sharing schemes in cities like Delhi and Bengaluru have suffered from theft, maintenance challenges and poor uptake in hazardous traffic environments. Application-based shuttles remain limited in scope.
“The real problem is that the last mile is no one’s problem,” says Amit Bhatt, managing director of the International Council on Clean Transport (ICCT) in India. “Metro is planned separately, road agencies build roads, and transport organizations operate buses. To bridge this gap, we need empowered, financially independent unified transport authorities – similar to TfL – that prioritize integrated planning.”
While many Indian cities have established Unified Urban Transport Authorities (UMTAs), Bhatt argues that most remain coordinating bodies with no real enforcement powers.
This lack of unified authority means that individual transport agencies continue to operate within their own silos.
Delhi Metro no longer runs feeder buses directly, but has incorporated other options. According to Anuj Dayal, Principal Executive Director (Corporate Communications) of DMRC, around 1,500 e-cars operate from over 40 Metro stations, carrying nearly 53,000 passengers daily. The network has also tied up with aggregators like Rapido and Bharat Taxi.
DMRC says it takes a data-driven approach to identify last-mile gaps.
“We assess travel demand by mapping mobility patterns, field inputs and accessibility to residential and business clusters,” says Dayal. “In areas like Dwarka and Rohini, we realized that peripheral residential communities lack seamless connectivity, and e-car services were introduced accordingly.”
But the volume of passengers served by its feeders represents a tiny fraction of the 6.5 to 7 million daily trips made on the metro network.
Walk the last mile
In fact, the contrasts with cities abroad could not be more stark. In London, for example, planning prioritizes active travel (walking and cycling) over public transport, followed by less intensive modes of transport, with individual vehicles at the bottom. “Our bus network is designed so that 96% of Londoners live within 400 meters – a 10-minute walk – of a bus stop,” says Shashi Verma, Transport for London (TfL) strategy director. “We maintain high-quality, barrier-free footpaths and safe crossings to encourage walking.”
Experts say the Delhi Metro’s average distance between two stations – about 1.3 km – reflects its design as a “trunk” system for long-distance travel. In contrast, the Manhattan subway system has an average distance of only 400-500 meters in its densest corridors. This tighter mesh supports shorter walking distances, eliminating the need for last-mile modes.
In 2006, the Delhi Metro announced its mission to ensure one station is built within 500 meters of every residential area in the city by 2020. But today, the Metro is nowhere close to that goal.
“This is normal. However, in the case of Delhi NCR, we must keep in mind that this urban agglomeration is already among the largest urban agglomerations worldwide and is expanding rapidly with new residential and commercial areas emerging rapidly,” says Dayal. “The Delhi Metro network is keeping pace and will be more than 500 km long in the coming years. Moreover, if we add RRTS (Regional Rapid Transit System Limi) and other metro stations being built in Gurugram and Noida, the overall coverage will be very massive – covering almost every neighborhood in the region.”
The ICCT study proposed a neighborhood-level approach to expanding bus services, especially through the deployment of smaller electric buses designed to serve short routes within districts. It advised limiting new neighborhood routes to a service radius of 5 kilometers from depots, to reduce dead kilometers and ensure the feasibility of electric buses with alternative charging needs.
“First and last-mile connectivity, especially in low-density or hard-to-reach areas, remains a major barrier to expanding bus services in cities,” says Bhatt. “That’s why cities around the world offer neighborhood buses – like community buses in Japan, neighborhood buses in the US, and neighborhood buses in Germany.”
Shreya Gadipally, a mobility expert, confirms that walking remains the most effective way to cover the last mile, provided it is “safe and short, ideally less than five minutes.” However, she argues that urban design remains fundamentally flawed. “Everything is planned with cars in mind,” she says. “The people who design our cities don’t use public transportation; they travel by car and plan for cars.” This results in infrastructure such as skywalks and bridges, which are seen as tools to “keep pedestrians” out of the way of motorists rather than truly serving them.
She also points to the alarming decline in bus fleets in cities like Mumbai. “There was a time when Mumbai had such a huge fleet of double-decker buses that ensured efficient last-mile connectivity from suburban stations. But the fleet has come down from its peak of around 6,000 to less than 3,000,” he said, highlighting the widening gap in mobility in the city.
The new first district bus model in the capital
Meanwhile, Delhi is adopting what it calls a “neighbourhood first” bus model – filling the last-mile gap. Under the DEVI (Delhi Electric Vehicle Connector) initiative, the government is deploying smaller electric buses designed to navigate narrow lanes and underserved colonies that regular buses cannot reach.
Last year, Prime Minister Rekha Gupta launched 400 nine-metre electric buses, and more have been added since then. These air-conditioned minibuses, which have around 23 seats and additional standing capacity, operate from depots like Ghazipur, Vinod Nagar East and Nangloi. Its routes are designed to connect these colonies with nearby metro stations and major corridors of Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC).
Such investments in buses are far more beneficial than major capital-intensive projects like monorails and taxis, Gadipalli says. “Mumbai could have expanded its bus fleet by 50% with the money it invests in the taxi network,” she says.
However, O.P. Agarwal, a former IAS officer and transport expert, who was also the lead author of the National Urban Transport Policy (2006), takes a more nuanced view of the BKC project.
He says the proposed taxi connectivity between Bandra and Kurla stations in the suburbs via the BKC commercial district is “not a bad idea” to improve last-mile access within a dense mall.
“But there is a clear institutional gap in transport planning in our cities and it needs to be urgently addressed,” says Agarwal. “Unified transport authorities have already been established in many cities. It is time to start taking responsibility and work effectively. They cannot continue to wait for certain powers.”
He argues that these new agencies should start with achievable reforms — parking policy, fare integration, seamless transfers at select stations — rather than citing limited authority as an excuse.
“Lack of power cannot be a permanent excuse to avoid doing some meaningful work on the basics,” he says. “They should, at least, start. Once there are clear improvements on the ground, the necessary powers will follow.”
If this institutional shift occurs, the last mile may eventually become someone’s responsibility.
