AI can optimise Bengaluru’s bus network, but governance remains a bigger challenge
Experts at the Mobility Symposium 2026 discussed how AI can optimize Bengaluru's bus network by analyzing passenger demand and infrastructure needs. However, they emphasized that technological solutions are secondary to the urgent need for better urban planning, governance, and institutional capacity.
Why it matters
It highlights the gap between technological potential and the practical, systemic challenges of urban infrastructure management in rapidly growing cities.
Artificial intelligence can help optimise Bengaluru’s public transport network, from designing bus routes to adjusting services based on passenger demand, but effective governance and implementation remain bigger challenges, experts said at the Mobility Symposium 2026, hosted by MoveInSync, on Thursday.
Sreenivas Bhandari, vice-president, transit, ONDC, said that AI could enable public transport agencies to move away from rigid schedules and make services more responsive to demand. Data on passenger movement could, for instance, help determine how frequently buses should operate on particular routes and coordinate feeder services with metro demand.
He said open data, common standards and application programming interfaces (APIs) were crucial to integrating different modes of transport. With bus, Metro and other mobility data available through a common digital framework, commuters could potentially use a single application to plan, book, track, and complete an end-to-end journey.
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