As India continues to urbanize and its cities continue to establish themselves as economic growth drivers, players across the urban ecosystem must recognize the critical role that mobility systems play in sustaining cities. They are the arteries of cities—moving the people and goods that serve as the building blocks of India’s economy and society. For India to leapfrog the Western mobility paradigm and become a global leader in shared, clean, and people-centric mobility, its cities, policymakers, and business leaders must experiment with, learn from, and scale new, innovative, and integrated mobility solutions—and they must do so quickly. By offering a process for working collaboratively across India’s public and private sectors to rapidly identify, integrate, implement, and scale mobility solutions that transform how people and goods move in Indian cities, the Urban Mobility Lab can accelerate India’s mobility transformation and build a replicable model for others to follow.

About this report

Pune, Maharashtra was selected in June 2018 as India’s first Lighthouse City for mobility solutions in response to NITI Aayog and Rocky Mountain Institute’s “Grand Challenge”. NITI Aayog and RMI proposed the concept of Lighthouse Cities in their May 2017 report, India Leaps Ahead: Transformative Mobility Solutions for All, with the idea of creating several leading geographies to serve as test-beds for the implementation of new, innovative, and integrated urban mobility solutions. The Pune Municipal Corporation and Rocky Mountain Institute hosted India’s first Urban Mobility Lab 15–17 October 2018 and worked with government, industry, and civil society leaders to collaboratively design mobility solutions for implementation in Pune.

This report is a reflection of the discussions and work that took place at the Urban Mobility Lab in Pune. It aims to share experiences, key insights, and valuable lessons learned from the Urban Mobility Lab in order to support the adoption and scaling of mobility solutions that were developed in Pune, both in India and around the world.

By sharing this information, we aim to foster further dialogue on key challenges and opportunities in India’s urban mobility transformation, inspire new collaborations within and across government and industry to design and implement solutions, and generate greater alignment among all stakeholders on key opportunity areas to accelerate India’s shift to a shared, clean, and people-centric mobility future.