Is Namma Metro Age-Inclusive? Everyday Experiences of Transportation Inequalities for Older Adults

Abstract

Metro rail is envisioned as a core strategy in major Indian cities to address urban mobility issues such as congestion, air pollution, and lack of accessibility. Bengaluru, with its metro rail project, Namma Metro (“Our Metro” in English), begun in 2011, was one of the earliest adopters of this urban transport system in South India. Twenty-five other Indian cities will adopt the metro rail by 2025, with a total investment of $54 billion (IIR, 2020). The focus of the discussion on Namma Metro has largely been on the state-of-art technology used, the aesthetics of the train and the stations, and the efficiency of the system. There is scant attention paid to the everyday experiences, struggles, adjustments and adaptions made by heterogeneous urban dwellers while using the metro system, and even less to that of older adults with limited digital literacy. Using an intersectional approach, we examine how interlocking categories of age, gender, caste, class and metro infrastructure interact and shape the ‘splintering urban’ experiences for older adults in Bengaluru’s metro. Based on sixty qualitative in-depth telephonic interviews with older adults, we explore interpretatively what Namma Metro means to their everyday mobilities and how they negotiate this ‘modern infrastructural ideal.' We find that older adults’ unfamiliarity with ticketing systems, technology-driven navigation processes and the new infrastructure environment of metro rail evoked an ‘out of place’ feeling, leading to anxious journeys. Further, a poor grievance redressal system and lack of trust in the government contributed to normalising barriers as a by-product of age. Lack of agency made older commuters circumvent such barriers by avoiding the metro system. Such exclusionary experiences have shaped older adult’s perception of Namma Metro as designed for ‘youngsters’ and ‘officials’ and deprived them of the primary public transport network to access the city.