Why Bengaluru’s Namma Metro Has Become India’s Costliest Ride
Bengaluru’s Namma Metro was envisioned as the city’s escape route from traffic jams — fast, reliable, and reasonably priced. Over the past year though, it has earned a different reputation: the most expensive metro system in India. A steep fare hike of around 70% on several routes has turned daily commutes into a serious monthly expense for many households. For a city that desperately needs mass transit to keep its economy running, that is a worrying shift.
To understand how we got here, it helps to start with how metro fares are supposed to be fixed. Operators like BMRCL do not have a free hand to simply increase prices whenever they wish. Fare changes are meant to be vetted by a Fare Fixation Committee (FFC), typically consisting of a retired High Court judge, technical experts, and representatives from both the state and central governments. The committee studies costs, network size, ridership, and financial sustainability, and then recommends a structure that balances affordability with viability. Only after this process is completed should new fares come into force.
In Bengaluru’s case, this sequence was effectively reversed. Commuters saw steep hikes first; the full FFC report was made public months later and only after legal and public pressure. For regular users suddenly paying far more for the same journey, it felt like the logic for the increase was being explained after the fact. That alone eroded trust in the system, especially when many parts of the network still lack seamless last-mile connectivity and full city-wide coverage.
The Cost Argument: Headline vs Reality
BMRCL’s main defence has been that its costs “exploded” between 2017 and 2024. The corporation has argued that staff salaries, power bills, outsourced services, and maintenance together pushed annual operating expenses up by roughly 133% over this period. On the surface, that sounds dramatic and makes a strong case for higher fares. The problem is that, during the very same period, Namma Metro nearly doubled its network length.
Back in 2017, the operational network was a little over 40 km. By 2024, it had expanded to more than 70 km, with further additions taking it close to 100 km now. Once you spread the total cost over this expanded system, the picture changes significantly. Estimates suggest that operating costs per route-kilometre rose from around ₹6.2 crore to roughly ₹8.6 crore across these years — an increase closer to 39% rather than 133%. That is still a meaningful jump, but it is more in line with broader inflation and wage trends than the “explosion” implied by the raw total.
There is another crucial offset: ridership. Daily passenger numbers have grown from a few lakh in the earlier years to peaks above 10 lakh on some days now. Higher ridership means higher ticket revenue and better utilisation of the fixed network. When both network length and ridership are rising, looking only at total cost growth without adjusting for these factors exaggerates the pressure on finances and, by extension, the “need” for an aggressive fare hike.
What The FFC Recommended – And What Actually Happened
This brings the story back to the Fare Fixation Committee. The FFC did not ignore BMRCL’s cost pressures. It agreed that an upward revision was required, especially since fares had not been changed since 2017. But its solution was far more calibrated than what commuters ultimately experienced.
The committee’s report recommended an overall increase of about 51.5% compared to the old fares and suggested that this should be spread over roughly 7.5 years. To avoid long gaps without any revision followed by a sudden shock, it also proposed an automatic annual increase of up to 5%, linked to cost trends. The base fare was to remain at ₹10, and the maximum fare was set at ₹90, with different slabs in between.
BMRCL, however, had originally argued for a much sharper revision, seeking more than a 100% increase over the old structure and pitching a base fare of ₹21 and a maximum of ₹123. While the final notified structure sits closer to the FFC’s slabs than to BMRCL’s initial demand, the way increases were timed and concentrated meant that many common journeys saw a single-step jump of 60–70%. A ride that previously cost around ₹40–₹45 could suddenly cost ₹70 or more, especially outside smart-card discounts. The committee’s intent was gradualism; the commuter’s experience felt like a jolt.
For a daily office-goer or student, this is not an abstract policy issue. Over 20–25 working days a month, such hikes can add up to several hundred or even a few thousand rupees more in transport bills. In a city already facing rising rents and living costs, that is not trivial.
Debt, Delays, And A Tight Financial Corner
To be fair, BMRCL’s finances are under real stress. Metro systems are capital-intensive to build and require large borrowings upfront. Over the next few years, BMRCL faces a sizeable repayment schedule on external loans, along with interest and principal on subordinate debt provided by the state and central governments. Internal projections and external analyses alike suggest that, without either fare hikes or strong government support, the corporation would continue to post significant net losses and struggle to fund maintenance and upgrades.
The funding mix worsens this situation. For many recent phases, the Karnataka government has borne a dominant share of the project cost, with estimates placing the state’s contribution at roughly 80–87% and the rest coming from the Centre. On top of this are bonds and multilateral loans. State finances are already stretched across competing priorities like health, education, and rural schemes. When “shadow cash support” — reimbursements and interest-free subordinate loans meant to ease operational losses — slows or becomes uncertain, BMRCL finds itself reaching for the quickest lever available: fares.
Construction delays add another layer of pressure. Whenever a corridor is delayed, its cost tends to escalate while revenue from that line is pushed further into the future. The Yellow Line is a telling example: per-kilometre construction costs reportedly touched around ₹400 crore, significantly above the more typical ₹250 crore for elevated metro stretches. Until such lines open and start carrying passengers, they remain expensive, non-earning assets on BMRCL’s books. The longer that period, the more the pressure builds to “make up” through higher tickets once operations begin.
A Small Network With Big Expectations
Despite being the longest metro in South India, Bengaluru’s network is still modest in national and global terms. Delhi Metro, for instance, runs close to 400 km and has nearly 300 stations. Bengaluru crossed the 70–90 km band only recently and still lacks full orbital connectivity and seamless integration with buses and suburban rail. That matters because economies of scale are powerful in mass transit. The larger the network and the more trips it carries, the lower the fixed cost per passenger-kilometre.
In Bengaluru, fixed expenses for control centres, depots, core staff, and system maintenance are being spread over a network that is still in the “build-out” phase rather than the “mature, dense grid” phase. Even if individual lines are crowded and daily ridership looks high in absolute terms, the system as a whole does not yet enjoy the same scale advantage as a Delhi or a Hong Kong. The per-passenger cost of keeping the system running, therefore, remains higher.
For commuters, the visible reality is simpler: they weigh metro costs against realistic alternatives. If a combination of BMTC bus plus a last-mile auto is significantly cheaper, many will shift, especially for shorter or medium-distance trips. If ride-sharing or two-wheelers become more cost-effective for groups or families, that too draws users away from the metro. Projections of 15–16 lakh daily riders by the end of the decade assume that fares stay within a band that feels reasonable to the median commuter. Push beyond that, and growth can stall, undermining both congestion relief and the financial model.
How Successful Metros Balance Their Books
The good news is that other cities have already walked this path, and Bengaluru does not have to reinvent the wheel. The FFC explicitly studied systems in Delhi, Chennai, Singapore, and Hong Kong while framing its recommendations. The common pattern in the more successful models is clear: they do not rely excessively on passenger fares alone.
Instead, they build strong non-fare revenue streams. Advertising on trains and in stations, naming rights for stations, retail and office space in and around metro premises, and larger transit-oriented development policies all contribute meaningfully to their income. Delhi Metro, for example, has steadily grown its non-fare revenue share over the years, making it less dependent on squeezing every rupee from tickets. Internationally, Hong Kong has become almost a textbook case of integrating real estate and metro operations into a single ecosystem.
On the fare side, transparent and formula-driven revisions help. When commuters know that fares will be adjusted by a small, predictable percentage every year or two, it reduces both political friction and public shock. The FFC’s suggestion of an annual revision cap of about 5% was an attempt to introduce exactly this kind of predictability. If Bengaluru follows through consistently, future fare changes could feel less like sudden blows and more like manageable, incremental updates.
What Bengaluru Needs To Fix
Stepping back, the Namma Metro story is really about the trade-off between financial self-sufficiency and the broader public good. A metro treated as a purely commercial enterprise will naturally gravitate towards higher fares when costs rise and debt weighs heavily. A metro viewed as critical urban infrastructure will see a greater share of that burden absorbed through public funding, cross-subsidies, and smarter monetisation of land and stations, allowing fares to remain within reach for the average commuter.
For Bengaluru, three broad shifts look essential if the “most expensive metro” tag is to be shed:
▫️Fare policy needs to become more predictable and less ad-hoc, sticking closer to transparent, formula-based revisions rather than sudden spikes.
▫️Project execution must improve so that lines are completed faster, cost overruns are contained, and revenue starts flowing earlier on new corridors.
▫️Non-fare revenue has to be treated as a strategic pillar, not a side activity — from advertising and station rights to serious transit-oriented development.
Until that happens, commuters will continue to feel like they are paying today for a combination of yesterday’s delays, design choices, and funding gaps. The risk is that, in trying to protect the metro’s balance sheet through high fares, the city slowly pushes riders back onto already choked roads. For a tech capital that lives and dies by the efficiency of its daily commute, that is a risk Bengaluru can hardly afford to ignore.
