April 26: A special pedestrian cell will be set up at the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation office to deal with problems that pedestrians face and where they may lodge complaints. The cell is part of the comprehensive pedestrian policy formulated at a meeting convened by GHMC officials and attended by representatives of various NGOs headed by Right to Walk Foundation.

The meeting happened following directions from the State Human Rights Commission. The policy also proposes widening of footpaths from six feet to 12 feet and footpaths that are free from encroachments. The GHMC additional commissioner, Mr K. Dhanunjaya Reddy, said a draft policy has already been prepared and sent to the state government for its approval. “Apart from the widening of the footpaths depending of the width of the road, the policy also proposes removal of electricity transformers; evicting encroachers from footpaths; checking urination on footpaths; construction of skywalks; and providing street furniture for pedestrians,” he said.

The pedestrian policy will be integrated with the overall transport policy being prepared for the city. He also said the city’s traffic policy will not just concern vehicular traffic but will also include mobility plan for pedestrians. Representatives of the 16 NGOs who attended the meeting urged the policy makers that hawkers must not be evicted in the name of pedestrian facility. They suggested that the new policy should provide space for pedestrians and hawkers without obstructing vehicular traffic.

But the sad part of this is that even after almost a year, no action has been taken and the stretch remains as unsafe  as ever for the pedestrian.

Footpaths are not for walking

Parking Space for the bank

Walk on the Road, this is Hyderabad

http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/article257532.ece

Photo: Mohd. Yousuf

Another casualty: Traffic comes to a grinding half after a speeding bus knocked down a pedestrian while he was crossing the road in Begumpet on Sunday.

Source: http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/15/stories/2010031559770300.htm

MISSING PEDESTRIAN PATHS: The pedestrian environment is so severely vitiated on Indian roads that walking, the most natural of human activities, has become an extremely unpleasant, if not a hazardous, activity. A scene from downtown Bangalore. Photo: By Special Arrangement

MADHAV G. BADAMI

Pedestrian accessibility should become the first step in an enlightened urban transport policy.

The rapid growth in automobile use in India is causing a wide range of adverse impacts, even as it provides mobility to millions of people and contributes to employment generation and the economy. While traffic congestion and emissions have attracted much policy attention, perhaps the most serious of these impacts, in health and welfare terms, result from road traffic accidents. Annual road traffic deaths in India have increased from 15,000 in 1971 to over 100,000, nearly a tenth of all such deaths worldwide. Pedestrians and cyclists, the most vulnerable road users, account for the bulk of road fatalities, followed by motorised two-wheeler riders. Thus, the road users and modes that are the least responsible for traffic fatalities and other urban transport impacts are the most adversely affected. While what attention that this serious problem gets focusses on fatalities, there is a substantially larger number of injuries. Tragic as traffic deaths are, injuries are no less so; they occur during the most productive phase of life, and economically devastate families. Traffic-related injuries, already the ninth leading cause of deaths globally, are projected by the World Health Organisation to become the fifth leading cause of death, ahead of all cancers, by 2030.

The local impacts of motor vehicle activity are serious, but there are other important impacts, related to energy security and climate change. Road transport consumes around 50 per cent of the world’s petroleum, and petroleum demand is growing more rapidly in this than in other sectors. In India, road transport accounts for a third of petroleum consumption, which has nearly tripled in the last two decades. Three-quarters of it is imported. The future is worrisome, given projected trends in motor vehicle and other energy-intensive activities, vulnerability to world oil prices, and limited domestic reserves.

Urban transport policy in India has focussed predominantly on road infrastructure development, transport system management, and other technological measures to accommodate motor vehicles and mitigate their impacts. There is an important role for motor vehicles and infrastructure for them, but building our way out of the problem – by widening roads and building flyovers and highways – is not only very expensive but an exercise in futility, even in resource-rich contexts. While road-building may improve speeds for vehicles and ease congestion in the short term, it leads to ever more vehicle activity and congestion, and the need for even more roads. It is a vicious spiral over the longer term. Congestion continues to worsen on highways in the U.S., despite massive expenditures, which in 2000 amounted to around $350 million daily. Adding highway lanes to address traffic congestion has been likened to loosening one’s belt to cure obesity.

It is bad enough that urban transport policy in India is focussed predominantly on road capacity addition, given inadequate resources to accommodate even present levels of vehicle activity, and growing multiple demands on those resources. Worse, non-motorised modes are not only ignored but actively discriminated against. Footpaths, where they do exist, are largely unusable, on account of poor design and maintenance, obstructions including electrical equipment, uncollected garbage, parked vehicles and encroachment by local businesses. More distressingly, footpaths are being lost due to road widening. There are few if any facilities for pedestrians to cross roads safely and conveniently; where such facilities exist, they are spaced too far apart, and the crossing times are often inadequate. Hard, barricaded medians are increasingly erected to ensure smooth vehicle traffic. The pedestrian environment is so severely vitiated that walking, the most natural of human activities, has become an extremely unpleasant, if not a hazardous, activity. Indeed, in a nation of pedestrians, the pedestrian has been rendered a third class citizen.

While groups such as young children, the elderly, the disabled, and the urban poor, who often have no choice but to walk or cycle, are particularly disadvantaged and at serious risk of being hurt or killed in accidents, the lack of pedestrian accessibility affects all, since everyone, including vehicle users, is a pedestrian at some point. Further, the loss of pedestrian accessibility is a major contributor to other urban transport impacts. It is because it is so time consuming, if not unsafe, for people to walk even over short distances that many trips over these distances are by force of circumstance undertaken by vehicles. The largely avoidable use of vehicles for short-distance trips, which account for a significant proportion of all urban trips, exacerbates congestion, energy consumption and emissions, and renders walking, cycling, and public transit even more unviable, increasing the need for vehicle use. In short, planning for vehicles to the exclusion of other modes leads inexorably to ever more motor vehicle activity and impacts.

There is an urgent need, in order to effectively address the urban transport challenge, for an integrated approach that includes public transit that is reliable, convenient, affordable and widespread; pricing of road use that internalises, to the greatest extent possible, the social costs of urban transport, and provides incentives for minimising vehicle activity; and last but not the least, pedestrian accessibility as the very foundation of urban transport policy and planning.

Providing infrastructure and facilities for pedestrians (and cyclists) is only logical and fair, given that the users of these modes bear the brunt of fatalities and injuries, among other urban transport impacts. Secondly, the high population densities and intensively mixed land use that characterise Indian cities, along with the low income and vehicle ownership levels among the majority, make walking and other non-motorised modes both possible and necessary. These modes and public transit in fact account for the vast majority of urban trips, despite the natural advantages of urban form having been lost due to rapidly growing motor vehicle activity, and the poor quality of the pedestrian environment and public transit service. Making walking and cycling more safe and easy would help reduce short-distance motor vehicle trips, which are the most energy-consuming and polluting on a per-kilometre basis; allow all modes, including personal motor vehicles, to operate more efficiently; and render public transit attractive and effective, by improving access to it, and helping improve bus operational efficiency. As a result of these effects, it would contribute to the reduction of congestion, energy security, air quality and climate change goals with high cost-effectiveness, and obviate the need for expensive road capacity addition and end-of-pipeline technological cures.

Walking shares, already high despite adverse circumstances, could be higher still; walking and cycling are competitive in terms of door-to-door journey times with motor vehicles and public transit over short and medium distances, if adequate infrastructure and facilities are provided. The weather is undoubtedly a factor, but people tend to use these modes more as well as over longer distances when the quality of the pedestrian environment is improved. “Build it and they will come” is as true of pedestrians (and cyclists) as it is of vehicles. Tragically, while countries like the Netherlands, which have significantly higher income and car ownership levels, provide first-class pedestrian and bicycle facilities as a matter of enlightened urban transport policy, walking and cycling are considered to be retrograde in a nation such as India characterised by poverty. The key lesson from the Netherlands experience is that concerted public action has a crucial role in limiting vehicle use, notwithstanding high incomes and vehicle ownership.

In is encouraging in this regard that the National Urban Transport Policy, announced in 2006, stresses the importance of putting people before motor vehicles, and commits itself to prioritising non-motorised transport. At the same time, large amounts of funds are being made available for urban infrastructure under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, including, very recently, for the purchase of 40,000 buses. These funds will hopefully be used to ensure that infrastructure and facilities for pedestrians (and cyclists) are incorporated as an essential component of all urban transport projects, and are provided across cities. Doing so would minimise the need for, and curb rapid growth in, motor vehicle activity, enhance the effectiveness of public transit, promote liveability, and help achieve an urban transport system that is safe, cost-effective, resource conserving, environmentally benign, and that benefits all, including vehicle users.

(Madhav Badami teaches in the School of Urban Planning and the McGill School of Environment at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. A longer version of this article was published recently in the Economic and Political Weekly.)

Source: http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article56631.ece

Ms Kanthi Kanan, founder of the Right to Walk Foundation that filed the petition, further stated that urinating in public places — footpaths, near bus stands and even main roads — is not only a public nuisance, it also causes embarrassment and humiliation to women.

“Women have to turn their heads the other way or cover their faces with their sari pallus or chunnis to avoid embarrassment…The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has failed to check the menace,” Ms Kannan told this correspondent. Her petition to the human rights commission highlights a citizen’s right to walk unhindered on a clean footpath.

The failure of the GHMC to address the problem constitutes a violation of a citizen’s fundamental rights to education, work, an adequate standard of living, and freedom of movement and residence, she said.

The president of the Progressive Organisation of Women, Ms V. Sandhya, said that the onus is put on women to try and get past a man who is openly urinating in public. “A law needs to be brought with stringent punishment to put an end to the anti-social act,” she said.

The GHMC commissioner, Dr Sameer Sharma, says fining people “did not work” so “now we are identifying all roads where public toilets and urinals must be constructed.

Source: http://www.deccanchronicle.com/hyderabad/zip-pee-open-‘stripping’-128

So this is why we see pedestrians, choosing to risk their lives on a daily basis by walking alongside fast-moving cars and ominous buses instead of fighting for decent and walkable footpaths. The risk to life isn’t just a myth; statistics suggest that more than 45% of all accidents that take place in the city Hyderabad are pedestrian-related.

There are many aspects in the pedestrian environment that contribute to the overall concept of a walkable community. Walking could be a pleasurable activity and would definitely go a long way in reducing air pollution in our city. People walk everywhere – from home to work, to shop, to school, and to the park. Every trip by car or bus or other mode starts and ends with walking.

Q. What is a walkability survey?
A walkability survey is a tool that enables us to collect data about our city’s pedestrian environment in a very systematic way. It is also a means by which pedestrians can convey to policymakers what aspects of specific pedestrian sidewalks make for a pleasant and unpleasant walking experience (e.g., feeling unsafe because of lack of lighting, permanent obstructions narrowing the walking space thus making walking uncomfortable). The results of the survey can help decision makers make targeted solutions to improve the walkability of footpaths.

Q. Why do the walkability survey, when we know that Hyderabad has a poor walkability index? Are we not trying to find out the obvious?
A. We agree with you that Hyderabad would have a poor walkability index. Often the perception of what the problem is need not be the reality. Most people when asked to state the major encroachers on the city’s footpaths answered that it was the hawkers that were the major menace. This is often not the case. On each road the encroacher may vary. On some roads the major encroachers are the Retail Outlets of Big Business houses and in fact on some roads, these business houses have already extended their business premises to the road itself. So a walkability survey will be able to pinpoint the exact nature of the problem and guide decision makers make targeted solutions. In fact in Hyderabad, in many places, the encroachers are the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s urinals and the transformers of the Electricity distribution agency.

Q. What are the Benefits of the walkability survey?
A. A walkability survey could lead to the following benefits:

(i) To pinpoint the types of encroachment or obstacles that hinder free movement for the pedestrian.

(ii)This in turn could act as a major tool in having a dialogue with the authorities to make pedestrian safety a priority issue.

(iii) This could also lead to the drawing up of more targeted and effective action plans based on a problem-solving approach.

(iv) The walkability index is a very powerful tool to make policy makers understand what needs to be done.

(v) It could urge the policy makers to have a Pedestrian Management Plan that will clearly give the dimensions of the footpaths of all the roads and will also indicate the Pedestrian Crossings.

In France, for example, President Jacques Chirac in his 2002 ‘Bastille day’ speech identified road safety as a personal priority for his administration. Political leadership at this high level sent a powerful message to government departments, the police, and the public about the high cost of road traffic deaths and injuries in France. In 2002 more than 7000 people were still being killed each year on French roads. By 2005 fewer than 5000 people were killed, a drop of more than 20%.

We in Hyderabad need to ensure that a similar message comes from our politicians and is thus translated into a serious campaign for ‘The Right to Life’ vis-à-vis the pedestrian.

For more information, please visit The Right to Walk Foundation website (www.right2walk.com) and CAI-Asia website (www.cleanairnet.org/walkability;

Contact Kanthi Kannan, the Founder President of The Right to Walk Foundation (theright2walk@gmail.com) or contact Sudhir, Transport Specialist of CAI-Asia Centre (sudhir@cai-asia.org) for more information.