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Navigating the Nightmare That Is Indian Public Transit

Caffeinated Thoughts
9 min readJan 9, 2025

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Life isn’t pretty for the millions of hapless public transport users in India

Photo by Amritansh Dubey on Unsplash

Introduction

An inconvenient, arid, hot, stinky, dusty, congested and polluted mess that is filled with all kinds of shady and unscrupulous characters. These are the first words that come to mind the moment I think about public transport in India. And as any foreigner who’s stayed in India for more than a couple of days would say, “it is an assault on the senses”.

It’s the reason why Indians work extremely hard to get out of the poverty trap that keeps them dependent on such systems. Most Indians aspire to own their own cars and bikes so that they don’t have to depend on poor, unreliable public transport services to get around and live their lives to the fullest. And when public transport is the least favoured mode of transport amongst the citizens of a country, there is bound to be a private vehicle epidemic, which in turn creates a whole new set of problems.

But why is public transport the least preferred mode of transport in India in the first place? Let’s find out.

These are some of the factors that make public transport a living hell for daily commuters in India:

Last mile connectivity

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Caffeinated Thoughts
Caffeinated Thoughts

Written by Caffeinated Thoughts

No niche in particular. I am a keen observer and gain inspiration for new articles from daily observation.

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