London’s transport commissioner Sir Peter Hendy has suggested that without sustained investment over the next 30 years, the British capital “will have the kind of congestion you’re looking at in Mumbai”.

With its severe and growing problems with traffic jams, Mumbai certainly sets an international benchmark for what the Economist has labelled “traffic bedlam”. Yet are these sorts of descriptions guilty of relegating Mumbai to a dystopian world of congestion, informality and lack of development?

Mumbai is in some respects well placed to pioneer new forms of what have been called ‘post-car’ approaches to urban transport planning. In comparison to western cities such as London, as well as cities in Brazil and South Africa, Mumbai has very low levels of car ownership. Most people walk or use public transport – an estimated 91% of trips in the city.

Mumbai also would seem well placed to adopt the latest global thinking in transport planning: an influential document produced by the international consultancy firm McKinseys in 2003 had transportation as one of the six “core areas” identified for Mumbai to attain “world class” status.

But Mumbai seems to be off the map in terms of implementing current innovations in urban transport policy-making. Despite widespread aspirations of emulating other Asian cities such as Singapore and Shanghai, a number of transport interventions are surprisingly absent. This includes urban road pricing or congestion charging, first pioneered by Singapore in the 1970s. This absence is all the more surprising given that 500 staff are responsible for maintaining the software systems for London’s congestion charge in offices located in a busy suburban neighbourhood of Mumbai ...

Mumbai also lacks public bike-share schemes despite their rapid recent spread across the globe, and unlike an estimated 166 cities internationally, does not contain any Bus Rapid Transport Systems (BRTS). Indeed, there are not even any dedicated bus lanes, despite the city’s efficient bus system.

Transport planning and policy in contemporary Mumbai has been geared around the motor car. More than 60 flyovers have been built since the late 1990s, despite similar schemes being deemed failures in many other cities.

There has also been an emphasis since 2008 for elevated pedestrian walkways, or “skywalks”. Ostensibly a pedestrian-orientated intervention, helping facilitate Mumbai’s high levels of walking and tapping into a new trend for raised urban walkways such as New York’s High Line, what they really seek to achieve is to clear the crowded streets below of slow-moving people, thus freeing up space for more cars.

Again the comparison with London is intriguing; England’s capital is currently tearing down its highwalks, which have become at best a nostalgic feature of the post-war urban landscape.

So why this emphasis on cars when the vast majority of Mumbai’s population do not have access to this form of travel? One reason is that there is not necessarily the institutional capacity in Mumbai to instigate innovative approaches to transport planning. There is no comparable agency to Brazil’s Institute of Research and Urban Planning in Curitiba, which for more than 40 years has helped to acquire knowledge, undertake analysis and nurture transport schemes such as BRTS.

Instead, there is a continued reliance on transport planning in Mumbai that has not been significantly updated or superseded. In particular, a 1963 report by US firm Wilbur Smith still forms the backbone for many of the city’s transport schemes, such as the Bandra-Worli Sealink, which opened in 2009.

This institutional “analytical vacuum” has been easily filled by civic-society pressure groups – small groups of “concerned” middle-class citizens with interests in improving their journey to work by car. It has also been manipulated by corporate interests, who have a financial stake in steering transport planning towards large lucrative projects such as flyovers.

Another important reason for the city’s continued car-centric focus is the limited enthusiasm from politicians for alternative thinking around transport. There are no urban leaders – such as Jaime Lerner in Curitiba or Enrique Peñalosa in Bogotá – willing to act tough on cars. Instead, a large part of most politicians’ time in Mumbai is spent being chauffeur-driven from the airport to the state government buildings further south, via the new Sealink.

Unlike in London, Barcelona or New York, public transport and cycling is not an election winner. An image of a politician cycling like London mayor Boris Johnson, or on the Tube like his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, would be a clear sign of low status. Rather, it is instructive how a connection with highly visible, car-focused transport schemes can seemingly facilitate a political career. Nitin Gadkari, now transport minister in the BJP national administration, was the public works minister responsible for Mumbai during the late 1990s, when he became known as “Mr Flyover”.

Mumbai’s love of the car is no esoteric concern. It has significant impacts on issues of air quality and on human-induced climate change, especially given Mumbai’s influential role across urban India. But this is not to say that sustainable transport solutions from elsewhere are necessarily the panacea for Mumbai’s transport difficulties. Not only is there no guarantee they will transfer to Mumbai successfully, but they may not be the most appropriate to the city’s specific needs and existing infrastructure.

In truth, Mumbai contains many of its own key pointers for urban transport futures. Not only in terms of its impressive statistics for non-motorised modes of commuting, but in its management of large numbers of people via public transport. This is a city where one suburban station might deal with the population of Copenhagen on a daily basis.

So perhaps it is not surprising that features of Mumbai seem to be appearing in London. The implementation of shared spaces or “naked streets”, such as Exhibition Road in Kensington, resemble ordinary, suburban streets in Mumbai, where different road users jostle for position but somehow manage to negotiate their routes. Maybe Sir Peter Hendy might also be pleased that London is moving in the direction of Mumbai.

• Professor Andrew Harris is a geography and urban studies lecturer at University College London. He works between London, Mumbai and Buenos Aires