MOAT
Delhi / Public transport / Everyday city life
Delhi / India / Urban research collective
DELHI / 2026

MOAT

MINISTRY OF ALL TRANSPORT

Building cities of the future, centred around humans and designed for humans. We ride, walk, map and question the everyday systems that make urban life work.

THE CITY IS THE LAB.

MOAT looks at Delhi through movement, streets and everyday public life. The projects below are different ways of asking the same question: how can the city work better for people?

01Delhi Metro JazzCulture / Movement↗ 02Cool Shaded PathsHeat / Walking↗ 03Community EngagementRides / Public Transit↗ 04Delhi Bus SystemsRoutes / Labour / Waiting↗ 05Galilee StudiosUrban Design↗
01 / Complete

DELHI
METRO
JAZZ

EVERY TRAIN. A NOTE.

Delhi Metro Jazz explores Delhi's Metro through music, movement and urban culture.

Stations, lines, announcements and repeated journeys become creative material. The project asks whether a familiar commute can become something people notice again, not only infrastructure to pass through.

DELHI METRO / LINE RHYTHMSIMPLIFIED NETWORK / NOT TO SCALE
RED
YELLOW
BLUE
GREEN
VIOLET
PINK
MAGENTA
GREY
AIRPORT
Continuous lines / station dots / interchange markersA graphic interpretation of the system, not a route map

HOW DOES THE METRO FEEL?

ENTER THE FULL PROJECTDELHIMETROJAZZ.COM ↗
02 / Ongoing

COOL
SHADED
PATHS

WHAT IF THE BEST ROUTE WAS THE COOLEST ONE?

Cool Shaded Paths asks what happens when walking routes are chosen by comfort and shade, not distance alone.

In Delhi, a route can be technically walkable and still be exhausting. We are exploring shade, tree cover, building shadows and places to pause as part of accessibility itself.

DIRECT ROUTE
SHORTER IS NOT ALWAYS BETTER.

Exposure can make the direct route harder.

SHADED ROUTE
COMFORT CAN CHANGE THE ROUTE.

Shade can make the longer route more usable.

METHOD / IN DEVELOPMENT

COMPARE THE SHORTEST PATH WITH THE MOST COMFORTABLE PATH.

Our method is being developed from shade-oriented routing research by the MIT Senseable City Lab in Dubai. Their study compares shortest and optimal shadiest paths within 500 m and 1,000 m walksheds around Metro stations, with changing rewards for tree shade, building shadow and indoor movement across seasons and times of day. For Delhi, we are adapting that logic to transit catchments and field conditions rather than treating distance as the only cost.

01 Map walking networks and transit catchments. 02 Add shade from trees, buildings and time of day. 03 Compare distance, exposure and field conditions.
REFERENCE PAPER / WALKING SMART IN THE HEAT ↗ WORKING PROTOTYPEOPEN DELHI SHADE MAP ↗

SHADE CAN BECOME INFRASTRUCTURE.

03 / Twice every month

RIDING
THE CITY
TOGETHER

THE CITY LOOKS DIFFERENT FROM THE PASSENGER SEAT.

Twice every month, MOAT organises public transport rides across Delhi and the NCR on Namo Bharat, the Delhi Metro and DTC buses.

The rides are both community events and field exercises: a way to experience transfers, stations, waiting and last-mile connections from the passenger's point of view.

COMMUNITY RIDE LOGDELHI + NCR
NAMO BHARAT / RRTS24 joinedDiscussed regional connectivity, station design, fares, transfers and what high-speed regional transit changes about everyday movement.
DELHI METRO19 joinedDiscussed interchanges, wayfinding, accessibility, station experience and how the Metro connects to the street outside.
DTC BUS16 joinedDiscussed waiting, route information, bus stops, comfort, last-mile access and what makes people choose or avoid the bus.
UPCOMING RIDES
26 SEP / TENTATIVE NAMO BHARAT: BEHIND THE SCENES

Proposed official community event with NCRTC looking at how Namo Bharat operates: control, stations, operations and the systems passengers normally do not see.

OCT / TENTATIVE THE RING LINES OF DELHI

A ride around Delhi's overlooked railway ring, reading the city through stations, neighbourhoods and connections that sit outside the usual Metro map.

04 / BUS RESEARCH

DELHI BUSSYSTEMS

Routes are only one part of a bus system. We are also interested in the people who operate it and the time passengers lose inside it.

Three lensesNetwork design / worker conditions / waiting-time stress.

READING THE BUS SYSTEM FROM ROUTE MAP TO HUMAN COST.

Our work on Delhi's buses began with route rationalisation at the IIT Delhi TRIPP Centre and expanded into a wider study of how the system is experienced by passengers and workers.

STUDY 01 / NETWORK

ROUTE RATIONALISATION

We looked at routes, frequency, headways, waiting, transfers and changing travel patterns. The method reads routes as a network rather than as isolated lines: where services overlap, where transfers become costly, and where reliability matters more than simply adding another route.

MethodRoute and headway mapping + overlap and transfer analysis + field observation + passenger-facing measures of waiting and reliability.
DRAG TO RATIONALISE
FROM CHAOS TO CLARITY
18MIN Illustrative waiting time
TANGLED CLEARER
STUDY 02 / LABOUR

DISPOSABLE DRIVERS

We studied the working conditions of DTC workers through fieldwork and narrative interviews at Kendriya Terminal, read alongside the 2022–23 CAG performance audit. The paper examines contractual precarity, wages, facilities, institutional change and the everyday experience of the people who keep the bus system running.

MethodField observation + narrative interviews + public audit documents + a theoretical reading through Marx's alienation of labour.
PAPER / Disposable Drivers: The Price Paid for Cheap Mobility
STUDY 03 / PASSENGER EXPERIENCE

WAITING-TIME STRESS

We treat waiting as more than a service metric. A ten-minute wait can feel very different depending on uncertainty, heat, crowding, seating, information and the possibility of a missed transfer.

MethodObserved and proxy indicators of waiting are read through an adapted use of Shirin M. Rai's depletion framework: the cumulative loss of time, bodily energy and emotional capacity when everyday systems demand more resources than they return.
CONCEPTUAL LENS / DEPLETION ↗
05 / MOAT'S DESIGN ARM

GALILEE
STUDIOS

MAKING THE EVERYDAY CITY MORE HUMAN.

Galilee Studios is MOAT's design arm, where urban research begins turning into physical interventions.

We work at the human scale: gullies, walking connections, shaded edges and small public spaces. The approach is community-led and starts with how a place is already used.

THE ARM THAT TURNS OBSERVATION INTO INTERVENTION.

PLACEMAKING

Work at the human scale where ordinary routines become city life.

COMMUNITY

People who use a place are part of the design process itself.

EVERYDAY LIFE

Design for sitting, walking, meeting, playing, waiting and moving.

FIRST PILOT / SAIDULAJAB

REWORKING
THE GULLEYS

THIS IS WHERE GALILEE STARTS ON THE GROUND.

A SHORT HISTORY

Said-ul-Ajaib is an old South Delhi village between the Qutub-Mehrauli landscape and Saket. Its name is linked to Sayyid-ul-Hujjab Maruf, a 14th-century noble and chamberlain in the court of Firoz Shah Tughlaq, whose khanqah once stood here. Over time, “Hujjab” evolved into “Ajaib” and the colloquial “Saidulajab”.

Today its narrow gullies are passage, front yard, social space and infrastructure at once. Our first pilot asks how small design changes can improve comfort and accessibility without erasing the everyday life already there.

The work begins with field notes, conversations and mapping before any intervention is proposed.

SAIDULAJAB / DELHI / FIRST PILOT

THE GALI IS NOT LEFTOVER SPACE.

Observe what already happens.Design with the people who use it.

TWO WAYS
OF LOOKING
AT ONE CITY.

Atishay and Adwitiyaa do not come to the city with the same obsession. That difference is the point.

AK / Co-founder

ATISHAY
KHANNA

Atishay's fascination with cities begins with movement: trains, transfers, buses, streets and the walk between a station and someone's home.

For him, transport and urban design are part of the same question: how can a city become easier to navigate, more accessible and more human?

RIDE IT. WALK IT. MAP IT. QUESTION IT.
AP / Co-founder

ADWITIYAA
PRAMANIK

Adwitiyaa absolutely loves buses: the routes, stops, passengers, neighbourhoods and the view of the city from the window.

Their wider interest is in everyday urban life, especially gullies, markets, pavements and the ways people adapt shared space beyond what a plan says should happen.

GET ON THE BUS AND SEE WHERE IT TAKES YOU.