Community Ideation Workshops in Ahmedabad Reveal Critical Mobility Barriers for Women

Under the MobiliseHER project, PRIA in collaboration with CRDF, conducted eight Community Ideation Workshops across diverse neighbourhoods in Ahmedabad between July and September 2025. The workshops brought together over 100 participants, primarily women and adolescent girls, to understand mobility and infrastructure challenges through a gender-sensitive lens.

Through participatory research sessions, the team engaged with residents across Akhbar Nagar, Behrampura, Gomtipur, Narol, Navrangpura, Odhav, Ambawadi, and Vasna to capture lived experiences regarding transportation, accessibility, and safety, while facilitating community brainstorming and solution design.

Participants shared how daily transport expenses, unreliable public services, safety concerns, and patriarchal constraints restrict women's movement and limit their access to education, healthcare, and economic opportunities. The community also highlighted infrastructure deficits, including inadequate walking paths, waterlogging during monsoons, and insufficient bus frequencies, alongside gaps in metro and BRTS accessibility. Throughout the conversations, residents offered concrete recommendations such as improved pedestrian infrastructure, enhanced bus reliability, better street lighting, and stronger driver accountability.

These workshops form a crucial part of MobiliseHER, a three-year initiative co-funded by the European Union and implemented in partnership with Urban Electric Mobility Initiative (UEMI), WRI India, CRDF, and PRIA, aimed at creating gender-responsive mobility systems in Indian cities.