Institutionalizing Mobility Demand Data Collection Processes Across Indian Cities
India has made significant investments in sustainable urban transport, including metro and bus systems. However, mobility planning continues to rely on dated data collected sporadically for individual plans and projects. Without current information on how and why people travel, which modes they use and the barriers they face, cities risk prioritising expensive infrastructure that does not adequately respond to people’s everyday mobility needs.
This expert note makes the case for institutionalizing a data-collection process through a periodic household mobility survey across Indian cities. It proposes an independent, nationally coordinated data-collection process that can provide consistent and regularly updated evidence on where, why and how people travel, including trips made by walking and cycling.
Key Takeaways
- Establish a periodic household mobility survey: Conduct a nationally coordinated mobility demand survey every five years to generate consistent and updated city-level data.
- Make mobility planning more evidence-based: Cities should be asked to use the data in Comprehensive Mobility Plans, master plans and detailed project reports so that transport investments respond to current mobility demand.
- Capture how different people travel: Collect origin-destination data disaggregated by mode, trip purpose and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, while accounting for mobility impairments, caregiving trips, multimodal journeys, trip-chaining and short-distance trips.
- Include cities of different sizes: Ideally, the exercise should cover all million-plus cities, with sampling approaches adapted to different city sizes and socioeconomic and geographic contexts.
- Build a shared national evidence base: With appropriate anonymization and privacy safeguards, mobility data should be made accessible through a national urban data repository to support transparency, research and better planning.
