2016 
NB This article has not been updated since 2016 and context and details may have changed since then. 

Bangalore (officially known as Bengaluru) is not short of impressive labels: it’s the Silicon Valley of India, one of the county’s fastest growing cities, arguably the country’s most dynamic urban economy, hosts a list of the top research institutes in India, has the largest bus system in India carrying more than 5 million people per day – and not least has hosted the Volvo Sustainable Mobility Award since 2011 – and won the prize itself in 2012. It also has huge challenges to manage its physical growth, and distribute economic opportunity widely, commensurate with its growth status.

Social-economic challenges – and the BIG (Bangalore Intra-City Grid) solution

The growth and socio-economic challenges of Bangalore play out in part as pressures on the transport systems in the city and region, and secondary pressures on the population resulting from poor transportation. Car ownership more than doubled in the first decade of the 2000s, while air quality is sometimes far above permitted national and international safety standards.

Central to the improvement efforts to the transport system in Bangalore is the work of the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC), and its partnership with the World Resource Institute’s EMBARQ India sustainable mobility program. There are various strands to the collaboration between BMTC and EMBARQ.

One of these is the upgrade to the bus system through the so-called Bangalore Intra-City Grid (BIG) which came online in 2013, and won the Volvo Sustainable Mobility Award in 2012. The plan is to grow to 3,000 extra buses per day, operating in synergy with improved street planning and transport management, ending up serving 2.5 million passengers per day. This would make the bus network host to nearly 50% of all motorized journeys in the city.

Another contribution is the evolution of the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) solution in Bangalore. BRT has come to life in India rapidly in the previous years, learning from its hugely successful application to similar urban areas in Latin America. From the first BRT in Ahmedabad in 2009, India has multiple large-scale BRT projects across the country, now including Bangalore. Added to this are major extensions, that went live in 2016, to the metro network, taking 100,000s more passengers off the crowded streets.

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