Kolkata is not what Calcutta was: Decoding city's mobility chaos

Never-ending Instagram memes and Twitter trolls might suggest Bengaluru is the slowest city in India, but in reality, it's not. The worst city in the country, as far as traffic is concerned, is the one you expect the least to be: Kolkata.

Wait, the story is not over. With an average travel time of 34 minutes and 33 seconds to cover just 10 km, Kolkata is the second slowest city in the world. Only Barranquilla, a city in Colombia, fared worse (36 minutes and 6 seconds for 10 km), as per the 2024 TomTom Trafic Index. Yet, all the talk was on Bengaluru's ordeals, not Kolkata's, which also reflects how the pecking order has changed over the years.

Kolkata today is not what Calcutta was once.

Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's prophetic words — that it's a dying city — are slowly becoming true. Or so it seems. From the glory days, the decline has been steady, including traffic blues. So, why is Kolkata crawling? There are a multitude of factors. Let's begin with road infrastructure.

Poor road connectivity

The road network in Kolkata is grossly inadequate for its growing population and number of vehicles. The population of the Kolkata metropolitan area, which includes the city of Kolkata and surrounding suburbs, is estimated to be around 1.5 crore. The number twist is here: Only 6.2 per cent of Kolkata’s metropolitan area comprises roads, which is significantly lower than Delhi, which has 21 per cent of its land areas used for roads. In the CBD or prime city area, the percentage is even less.

This anomaly is mainly because of almost non-existent land-use planning or control. In the Kolkata Municipal Corporation area, residential or mixed residential areas account for 68 per cent of land use, followed by 9.5 per cent for open space and parks, 6 per cent for industrial, 5 per cent for commercial, 4 per cent for agriculture, and only 3 per cent for transportation and storage, a recent World Bank report said.

“Uninhibited expansion of the city limits led to a sudden metamorphosing of mofussil areas into urban centres without proper planning and infrastructure. The unplanned land use in the suburbs of Kolkata is the biggest urban planning challenge,” said Sushanta Sarkar, a Kolkata-based town planner.

Public transport in shambles

Another contributing factor to the city’s traffic congestion is the non-expansion of mass (public) transport networks such as Metro services to the city's suburbs. The peripheral areas have seen exponential growth in population, while the public transport network has not seen a commensurate rise, with the suburban populace mostly using private or intermediate transit modes for commuting. All this adds to the choke.

As a result, the daily volume of vehicular traffic witnessed a massive spike from 2,03,100 in 2011 to 3,12,400 in 2025, as per the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) report. The city also has one of the highest vehicular densities among all Indian metros, with 2,448 vehicles per km of road, a KMDA official told The Federal.

Harrowing tales of daily commute

Says Bhivakar Chatterjee, a sales executive with an MNC, ''It takes more than two hours at peak time to reach my office at Salt Lake Sector V from my Behala Parnasree home, about 20 km away."

There are many undocumented incidents where people miss flights or trains. Take this: At least 50 passengers failed to catch their flights on a single day on September 8, 2020, due to traffic snarls near the airport following a brief spell of rain.

Rain or shine, the city moves at a snail's pace.

Interestingly, the Kolkata Police, in its annual review bulletin, blames hand-pulled rickshaws and auto rickshaws for the traffic crawl, plus the obvious inadequate road infrastructure, encroachment by hawkers and the surge in number of private vehicles.

Bhivakar Chatterjee, a sales executive with a multinational company, said it took more than two hours at busy office time to reach his office at Salt Lake Sector V from his home at Behala Parnasree, about 20 km away.

Metro expansion's slow pace

Then there is the Metro riddle. Remember, Kolkata opened India's first Metro in 1984 itself, with the work beginning in the 70s. 41 years down the lane, the operational network stands at just 58.68 km. Quite stunningly, the operational network of Delhi Metro, which started in 2002, is a massive 396 km. The crawl could not have been starker. The slow pace of Metro expansion in the city is exemplified by the Joka-Esplanade Corridor (Purple Line) which was approved in 2010-11. The corridor has yet to be fully operational, even after 15 years. Currently, the 32.13-km Dakshineswar to New Garia (Blue Line) is the only fully operational corridor in Kolakata.

The slow, but constant work of Metro expansion also adds to the traffic chaos. The longer it takes, the greater the ripple effect.

Centre-state tussle affects mobility

KMDA has proposed constructing a 7-kilometer, four-lane, elevated road from EM Bypass to New Town to ease traffic on Kazi Nazrul Islam Avenue (VIP Road), a major thoroughfare connecting the city's southern part with the airport. Last year, the state government allocated Rs 150 crore for the project, which is now in the tender process. The rapid expansion of the Metro Network and construction of an eight-lane 200-km Outer Ring Road, estimated at Rs 4,000 crore, have been envisaged to decongest the city, said the KMDA official.

There is a (political catch) as well. For the Ring Road and Metro expansion, the state will have to depend on the Centre for funds. With the federal ties at an all-time low, it remains to be seen if the Narendra Modi-led BJP government will allocate funds to the TMC-led Mamata Banerjee state government.

''The Ring Road proposal plan has been formulated and sent to the Centre. But the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways is yet to take a call,'' said the official.

As for Metro expansion, the Union Budget for 2025-26 allocated Rs 720.72 crore for the New Garia-Airport corridor (Orange Line). The corridor got an allocation of Rs 1,791.39 crore in the 2024-25 budget, but the actual spending was Rs 1,550 crore as per the revised estimate. This year, the Joka-Esplanade corridor (Purple Line) allocation is Rs 914.50 crore against Rs 1,208.61 crore last year.

The Budget document shows no allocation for the East-West corridor (Yellow Line) this year. Last year’s revised estimate brought down the allocation to Rs 500 crore from the actual allocation of Rs 906 crore. Railway sources say the massive budget cut is due to the less amount of pending work.

Economic pinch

Blame game and politics aside, things are not moving as fast as they should be, adding to the overall mobility chaos.

And there is the invisible economic pinch. Recent research by Calcutta University's Centre for Urban Economic Studies (CUES) says commuters collectively lose an estimated Rs 74,000 in just two hours of traffic jam due to lost productive time and increased fuel consumption. This translates to Rs 2.7 crore in a year.

The real economic cost will be much higher if the environment and health impacts are added to. Remember what Rajiv Gandhi said in 1985? The ride has been haphazard, from a city that took pride in being the 'best in India for public transport' to the most congested city. If you measure in other socio-economic-infra indices, the picture would be complete. Forget Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai, non-Metro cities like Bengaluru and Chennai have surged ahead economically, leaving Kolkata's wayside.

It hurts, rather it bleeds.

Also Read from our mobility series: For crawling Bengaluru, Metro fare hike is a bolt from the blue

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