[sustran] Chennai starts pedestrianising its roads Sixty per cent of the civic body's transport budget will be dedicated to non-motorised transport.

[Vinay Baindur]

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.*
 Nayantara Narayanan <http://scroll.in/#%21/?publisher=&title=>
Nov 11, 2014 · 01:30 am



 Photo Credit: Mark Pegrum/Flickr
<https://www.flickr.com/photos/ozmark17/1039094694>

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
<http://www.chennaicorporation.gov.in/images/nmt%20english.pdf> 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.