[sustran] Re: Pedestrian Budget

Rutul Joshi joshirutul at yahoo.co.in
Tue Mar 9 04:32:21 JST 2010


Hi Sudhir and others,

It is rather difficult to find something specific for the pedestrians in any city budgets in India. In budget heads, footpaths are sub-heads under 'roads and bridges' and sometimes there are simply not mentioned. Besides, spending money is one thing and having walkable footpaths is another. 

The budgets of most JnNURM cities are inflated with the JnNURM funds and the share for the pedestrians, both in terms of money and space, is becoming meagre as most of the money is spent on building roads/bridges/flyovers. For example, in Ahmedabad budget 2009-10:
	* The revenue expenditure on items named 'footpaths' increased from Rs 2.1 millions (2006-07) to Rs 3.8 millions (2008-09) with estimate of Rs 5.7 millions in 2009-10 budget. However, Total revenue expenditure under 'Roads, streets, footpath' increase from Rs 133.1 millions (2006-07) to Rs 154.2 millions (2008-09) with estimate of Rs 194.6 millions in 2009-10 budget. 
	* Total capital expenditure under 'Roads, streets, footpath' increase from Rs 8 millions (2006-07) to Rs 23 millions (2008-09) with estimate of Rs 832.5 millions (!) in 2009-10 budget. Interestingly, there is no mention of 'footpaths' in the break up here and it seems that most of the money is spent on re-surfacing/building roads. But I could be wrong here. 
	* The total size of Ahmedabad budget estimate in 2009-10 was Rs. 23000 millions approximately. You can draw your own conclusion here. A word of caution - we are only looking at a label called 'roads, streets, footpaths or roads/bridges' here and it does not include money spent under any other specific projects.
One often finds municipal officials commenting informally that the footpaths 'encourages' encroachments and in order to 'discourage' encroachments, we should not invest in footpaths! So we have widest possible roads with smallest  possible footpaths in our city. And it is obviously not a great policy to 'stop' encroachments either. 

With more and more cities are likely to take up the transport project under JnNURM, it is becoming crucial to protect the needs of the pedestrians. There is no guarantee that the money (for that matter, even space) for pedestrians would not be subverted to be used as something else. It would be a great loss that even with more progressive national urban transport policy, we could not make legitimate space for walking in Indian cities. 

regards,
Rutul

 
 




________________________________
From: Todd Alexander Litman <litman at vtpi.org>
To: Sudhir <sudhir at cai-asia.org>; Global 'South' Sustainable Transport <sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>
Sent: Sun, 7 March, 2010 3:32:00 PM
Subject: [sustran] Re: Pedestrian Budget


For information on estimated public expenditures on pedestrian and 
cycling infrastructure in the U.S. see:

"Bicycling and Walking in the U.S.: 2010 Benchmarking Report" by the 
Alliance for Biking & Walking, 
(http://<http://www.peoplepoweredmovement.org/site/index.php/site/memberservices/C529>www.peoplepoweredmovement.org/site/index.php/site/memberservices/C529. 


For information on the value of non-motorized transportation see:

Todd Litman (2003), "Economic Value of Walkability," Transportation 
Research Record 1828, Transportation Research Board 
(<http://www.trb.org/>www.trb.org), pp. 3-11; at 
<http://www.vtpi.org/walkability.pdf>www.vtpi.org/walkability.pdf.

Todd Litman (2004), Quantifying the Benefits of Non-Motorized 
Transport for Achieving TDM Objectives, Victoria Transport Policy 
Institute (<http://www.vtpi.org/>www.vtpi.org); at 
<http://www.vtpi.org/nmt-tdm.pdf>www.vtpi.org/nmt-tdm.pdf.


Most conventional travel surveys greatly undercount walking and 
cycling activity because they overlook short trips, non-commute 
trips, travel by children, and walking links of motorized trips. For 
example, a bike-bus-walk trip is generally counted simply as a 
transit trip; the bicycling and walking links are ignored even if 
they involve more travel time than the bus or train ride.

In virtually all examples studied, walking and cycling receive less 
funding than their proportional mode share. For example, even in 
North American cities typically 5-15% of trips and 15-30% of travel 
time are by non-motorized modes, yet walking and cycling receive less 
than 5% of total public infrastructure funding, and much less when 
parking facility subsidies are also considered.


Best wishes,
-Todd Litman




At 08:22 PM 06/03/2010, Sudhir wrote:
>Dear all,
>
>We are searching for % of Budget allocated for pedestrians in our cities and
>unfortunately could not find many Asian cities.
>
>Do you know how much % of money authorities are planning  to invest on
>pedestrians in your city?
>
>thanks,
>Sudhir Gota
>Transport Specialist
>CAI-Asia Center
>Unit 3510, 35th Floor, Robinsons-Equitable Tower,
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>Metro Manila, Philippines 1605
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>Skype : sudhirgota
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Sincerely,
Todd Alexander Litman
Victoria Transport Policy Institute (www.vtpi.org)
litman at vtpi.org
Phone & Fax 250-360-1560
1250 Rudlin Street, Victoria, BC, V8V 3R7, CANADA
"Efficiency - Equity - Clarity"
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