Economic Survey 2025-26: High, rising mobility costs evident; RRTS expansion offers hope
The Hindu
The Economic Survey 2025-26 emphasises prioritising people over vehicles to address rising mobility costs and enhance urban productivity.
Highlighting the high loss of productivity owing to mobility issues, the Economic Survey 2025-26, released on Thursday (January 29, 2026) noted that solving the challenge of moving the most people requires prioritising modes with the greatest carrying capacity, across short and long distances.
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“In estimates, it is evident that the costs of mobility issues are high and on the rise,” the Survey notes, citing studies from various research institutes tabulating the loss in productivity owing to traffic congestion. A Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) report on Delhi’s congestion places the productivity loss for an unskilled worker at between ₹7,200-₹19,600 per year, and for a skilled worker at between ₹8,300-₹23,800. For a highly skilled worker, congestion-related productivity losses may rise up to between ₹9,000-₹25,900 a year.
The Survey cites a working paper by the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) which adds another dimension: loss of productive hours. Late arrivals due to traffic congestion amounted to around 7.07 lakh hours for Bengaluru in 2018, translating to a monetary cost of around ₹11.7 billion. A similar report in 2018 by Uber-BCG pegged estimated costs due to traffic congestion in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata at around $22 billion per year.
Economic Survey 2025-26
“When transportation systems are inadequate, the city’s vitality diminishes—congestion, pollution, noise, and reduced productivity emerge as symptoms of decline,” the Survey notes.
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