Urban mobility discussions in India usually focus on office commutes, traffic congestion, and improving transport efficiency. Planning frameworks often imagine a simple, linear journey between home and work, made at fixed hours by an able-bodied commuter. But much of women’s daily travel does not follow this script.
A large share of women’s mobility is shaped by care responsibilities: dropping children to school, accompanying family members to hospitals or clinics, buying groceries, supporting elderly relatives, or managing several household errands in one trip. These journeys are short, frequent, and spread throughout the day. Yet they remain largely invisible in how transport systems are planned and evaluated.
When transport systems fail to account for these patterns, women lose time, energy, income, and opportunity.
Data makes patterns visible. According to the World Bank, around 84 percent of women’s trips in Indian cities depend on public transport, intermediate public transport such as autos and e-rickshaws, or walking. Walking alone accounts for 45.4 percent of women’s work trips, almost double that of men. These numbers are often framed as a question of affordability and access, but they also reflect something deeper. Care journeys require flexibility. They involve short distances, multiple stops, and travel at varied times, unlike the fixed, predictable nature of many office commutes.
These trips rarely align with peak-hour schedules. School drop-offs, hospital visits, and mid-day errands happen outside the typical rush hours. However, service frequency, route design, and last-mile connectivity rarely reflect these patterns, women often face long waits, indirect routes, multiple transfers, and longer walking distances. For those traveling with young children, during pregnancy, or with elderly family members, these gaps are not minor inconveniences. They become barriers to everyday mobility.
This International Women’s Day, under the theme “Give To Gain,” we are reminded that what cities choose to give shapes who gets to gain. When cities design for transport systems that recognize care work, women gain mobility that supports their full lives. With safer buses, better lighting, reliable schedules, and connected last-mile networks, women gain confidence, access, and greater opportunities for social and economic growth.
Delhi’s fare-free bus scheme for women, introduced in 2019, significantly reduced direct travel costs. By 2024, over one billion pink tickets had been issued, reflecting widespread use of buses by women in the city. Surveys show that many women increased their bus usage after the policy was introduced, including those who previously relied less on public transport. The impact was tangible. Many reported saving between 500 Indian Rupees and 1,000 Indian Rupees per month, money that often went back into household needs, education, or healthcare.
But affordability alone does not resolve the deeper challenges of care-related travel. Safety, accessibility, and reliability must be at the core of transport systems, too.
Providing responsive infrastructure means ensuring bus stops are within safe walking distances and supported by continuous, accessible footpaths. Giving reliability means improving service frequency beyond peak commuter hours. Giving dignity means acknowledging that carrying groceries, holding a child’s hand, or accompanying an elderly parent is not a secondary requirement but a fundamental necessity. Giving agency means making it possible for women to travel safely at any time of day.
When transport systems begin to reflect these realities, women gain more than convenience. They gain time. They gain flexibility. They gain the ability to participate fully in education, employment, and public life. And cities gain in return. They gain higher workforce participation, healthier families, reduced inequality, and transport systems that serve more than a single commuter archetype.
To design mobility systems that reflect the complexity of women’s daily lives is not about offering special treatment. It is about recognizing lived realities and planning responsibly. Infrastructure is never neutral. It either constrains participation or enables it.
This International Women’s Day, the call to give is a call to design differently. When cities invest in inclusive transport systems that acknowledge care journeys and everyday realities, women gain equal access to opportunities. And when women gain, cities become more equitable and sustainable for all. Designing with women at the centre is not just a matter of fairness – it is a commitment to building cities that truly work for everyone.
This article was contributed by Safetipin, a partner of the NDC Transport Initiative for Asia (NDC-TIA) which is part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI). The German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUKN) supports this initiative on the basis of a decision adopted by the German Bundestag. It supports China, India, and Viet Nam as well as regional and global decarbonisation strategies to increase the ambition around low-carbon transport.
Women in Delhi benefit from free fares with the pink ticket. | © Press Trust of India (PTI)
Hirva Patel
patelhirva286@gmail.com
