Bangalore Solutions Workshop

RMI India, Rocky Mountain Institute and Micelio hosted the Urban Mobility Lab in Bangalore in February 2020.

The Urban Mobility Lab aims to help Indian cities identify, integrate, implement, and scale mobility solutions that transform how people and goods move. The Bangalore Urban Mobility Lab served as a forum for open discussion and a platform for action through facilitated multistakeholder convenings and ongoing collaborative work.

With the Lab, government, private sector, and civil society aimed to codevelop solutions to system-level challenges and implementation plans for mobility projects. Bangalore suffers from the worst traffic congestion of any city in the world. On an average, Bengalureans driving during peak hours spend an extra 243 hours, (i.e., 10 days, 3 hours) in traffic each year at a cost of $6 billion USD (roughly 5% of the city’s GDP). RMI India and Rocky Mountain Institute partnered with Micelio, which works actively in Bangalore’s electric mobility ecosystem, to bring the Urban Mobility Lab to Bangalore.

The two-day multistakeholder workshop held on 19–20 February 2020 saw nearly 150 participants from the mobility ecosystem in Bangalore work together to address system-level barriers and develop implementation plans for mobility solutions. The participants generated more than 10 potential solutions to help Bangalore achieve its mobility goals (please find below a brief summary of the main solutions).

At the workshop, representatives from key government agencies engaged with participants to offer coaching and feedback, and to identify points of integration for proposed solutions. In the closing session, participants presented their solutions, receiving feedback from the following officials: Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited Managing Director – Ajay Seth, Bangalore City Police, Commissioner of Police – Bhaskar Rao, Government of Karnataka, Transport and Commerce and Industries Principal Secretary – Gaurav Gupta, Directorate of UrbanLand Transport, Commissioner – V. Ponnuraj, Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation Managing Director – C. Shikha, EkStep Foundation CTO – Pramod Varma, Infosys and Axilor Ventures co-founder – S. D. Shibulal, and Micelio’s founder & director – Shreyas Shibulal. Tejasvi Surya, Member of Parliament for Bengaluru South Lok Sabha Constituency was the Chief Guest.

Moving forward, RMI India, Rocky Mountain Institute and Micelio are committed to providing ongoing support in Bangalore to help implement these solutions. As a next step, our team plans to further build out details for each solution and engage with the appropriate government agencies and other critical champions to seek advice and support on taking these solutions forward.  Also, the findings of this process, along with other important conversations and themes, have been documented in a report.