A city stuck in first gear

I’ve made Pune my home for the last decade and a half. And the love that I felt for the city’s beautiful weather, its ability to breathe and the relatively less congestion on roads is gradually dissipating. However, what has remained constant is the struggle with the commute.

The everyday commute from home to office is about 12 km. Time taken to travel: On odd days, about 45 mins; and on even days in the evening, a little over an hour. There is no organised public transport system in the city – barely any buses (in commutable conditions), and the metro has not reached my area. So, the struggle is real.

I use the auto almost every day to commute, and the cancellation on the app and the refusal of regular autos have sometimes really dented my self-confidence. And this struggle is also real.

Pune ranks fifth as the most congested city in the world. Let that sink in. Spanning over 500 sq km, Pune is too big to be this broken. We are losing 158 hours a year — nearly a full week of our lives — to the bumper of the car ahead (According to the data from the 2025 TomTom Traffic Index).

On Sunday, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged citizens to conserve fuel by using public transport and carpooling, the discussion in Pune drifted to — ‘There’s barely any public transport to go by. Is carpool an option?’

With Middle Eastern tensions putting crude prices on edge, the looming threat of another hike at the fuel pump is also weighing heavily on the public mind. So carpooling may reduce driving fatigue, but the challenge will now be to get into WhatsApp groups and download apps that will probably help form groups (not so much like-minded people, but maybe people travelling to similar destinations).

Even though a few students and a large section of the IT sector prefer the carpool commute, to mainstream it will need a bit more push than just practicality. Perhaps it will turn the reluctant driver in me into a social coordinator. If we’re destined to spend 45 minutes moving at a crawl, we might as well dissect a Netflix series or share a playlist. In Pune, your carpool isn’t just a commute; it’s a support group. The challenge is to get the perfect one. And if you are not driving, good luck with the one fool-proof app to fulfil all your commuter needs.