http://scroll.in/article/687775/Showing-the-path-to-other-Indian-cities-Chennai-starts-pedestrianising-its-roads/
Showing the path to other Indian
cities, Chennai starts pedestrianising its roads
Sixty per cent of the civic body's
transport budget will be dedicated to non-motorised transport.
Chennai is rethinking it priorities. Its municipal corporation, the
oldest in India, is creating a network of footpaths, cycle tracks and
greenways to encourage residents to walk or cycle and to ease the
passage of human-powered transport like cycle rickshaws and pushcarts.
The civic body’s new
non-motorised transport policy introduced at the
end of September recognises that Chennai has enough paved space for
public transport and private vehicles. So, by 2018, it wants to
increase the transport mode share of pedestrians and cyclists by 40%,
reduce pedestrian and cyclist fatality to zero, create footpaths along
80% of streets, and make sure that most streets with a right-of-way of
more than 30 metres have an unobstructed cycle track. In addition to
this, it wants to raise the share of public transport in kilometres
travelled by 60%.
Critically, the new policy promises not to construct flyovers that
could prevent parallel pedestrian infrastructure from meeting the right
standards.
Backing up this wish list with resources, the city is willing to spend
60% of its transport budget on non-motorised transport. Each year, the
new policy is estimated to cost about Rs 400 crore.
This allocation shows the administration is taking the shift seriously,
said Shreya Gadepalli, India director of the Institute of
Transportation and Development Policy, which helped the Corporation of
Chennai design the policy. “This is a quantum leap,” Gadepalli said. “A
civic body is adopting a plan that says walking and cycling are our
priorities because they are important for quality of life,
transportation and equity.”
Sameera Kumar agreed. A transport researcher with Clean Air Asia, Kumar
pointed out that big Indian cities typically allocate about 2% of their
budget to non-motorised transport.
To improve access to public transport, the municipal body’s footpath
plan will focus on 471 major bus routes. The pavements will include
space for shop frontages, a two-metre pedestrian zone, and space for
landscaping and street furniture. The municipality has already spent
about Rs 30 crore to widen footpaths on 26 roads and shift obstructing
electrical and telephone junction boxes.
Though perhaps the first effort in India to find concerted official
support, Chennai’s new policy is not the first to recognise the need
for pedestrian-friendly roads in cities.
Delhi
In 2010, the Unified Traffic and Transportation Infrastructure
(Planning & Engineering) Centre of the Delhi government had drawn
up comprehensive guidelines for pedestrian-friendly road design. In
that year, nearly all the road space in the capital was occupied by the
14% of Delhi that drove. Cars, motorcycles and auto rickshaws made up
23% of all trips, while 44% of the trips were by foot. Yet, 40% of
Delhi’s road length had no footpaths.
In its guidelines, the Delhi centre laid out the minutest details,
including the ideal width to be left in front of stores so that people
slowing down to window-shop do not obstruct other pedestrians.
Still, little attention was paid to its sound advice. “The guidelines
for Delhi are excellent, world-class and highly implementable,” said
Kanthimatti Kannan, founder of the Right2Walk campaign in Hyderabad.
“But because they are guidelines and not mandatory, they do not work.
Policies need teeth. Nothing will happen unless it is made into a law.”
Bangalore
The main hurdle in implementing a change in road use policy is people’s
mind-set, said Kumar. “By prioritising motorists over everyone else, we
move vehicles, not people,” he said.
This mind-set is on display in Bangalore, where the government is
focusing on signal-free road corridors. “The corridors are anti-people
because they cut people off on both sides of the road,” Kumar said.
Though it does not have a serious non-motorised transport policy,
Bangalore does have Tender SURE (Specifications for Urban Road
Execution), a move towards widening footpaths and creating proper
parking zones at 12 important connecting roads.
Others
In Hyderabad, many new and widened footpaths fell into disrepair from
lack of maintenance, Kannan said. At other places in the city, they
were usurped for parking vehicles. In Mumbai, over 50 million walking
trips are made every day. Yet, pedestrians do not get commensurate
infrastructure – whether junctions to cross roads, footpaths or road
markings, noted Rishi Agarwal of The Walking Project in Mumbai.
Chennai aims to deal with the problem of footpath parking by including
design elements like knee-high bollards on the edge of pavements. It
simultaneously wants to introduce a new IT-based parking management
system for private vehicles, whereby parking slots could be rented for
a fee. This, it expects, will free up the 40%-50% of footpaths
currently occupied by parked vehicles.
Agarwal hoped that the Chennai policy will set a precedent, helping
residents of other cities pressure their representatives to draft and
implement similar schemes.