For me, walking is freedom, it’s liberation. Earlier, when I got tired of staring at the computer or a book, I would always go out and take a walk. A long quiet walk to refresh my mind, let the thoughts flow freely and treat my eyes to the lush green surroundings. For me, walking is also social equity, a time when people from various walks of life walk together on the same platform.

I thought that walking was one of my birthrights, that nobody had the authority to deprive me of it. But, all that was before they killed the greenery around me and reduced the width of the footpath to build a new flyover next to my house. When I asked why, they said that it was an answer to the heavy traffic problem in the area. Now, I prefer staying in the enclosed walls of my house, for my safety and to avoid the noise and pollution from the increased traffic flow in my vicinity. I am a citizen of Chennai and I am deeply disturbed by the loss of walking space within the city. How many of us share a similar story? Countless, is my guess.

Reports confirm that increasing traffic leads to increasing number of road accidents, increased noise, injuries, pollution and congestion.1 Chennai has been no exception and has been facing similar consequences because of the increased traffic flow within the city.

A World Bank report states that in developing cities across the globe, walkers comprise over a third of the modal share of all trips made.2 In Chennai as well, the same ratio applies, where, out of a 100 people, 30 make their trips by walking. Yet, development projects for the transport sector have largely focused on flyovers, bridges, connecting roads, highways, and public and private modes of transport. Footpaths and pedestrians get almost no mention in these projects, nor in city budgets. And even if they do get a mention, they are largely ignored when transport plans are executed. When we were looking for data for the Transparent Chennai map on pedestrians, the only information that we could find was on the budget allocation (zone-wise) for footpaths and works completed/in progress (just one figure). However, there is no way of verifying if the money is actually spent on such works and whether they are being spent judiciously. If the above could be verified, then we could get down to the next level of checking the quality of these footpaths. However, even a layman like me can tell you the worsening condition of the footpaths within the city.

This is pretty surprising considering that each and every one of us is a pedestrian at some point of time or the other. Why then are road transport projects not pedestrian centric? How is a flyover built without taking into consideration the loss of walking space? Norms specify that footpaths should not be less than 1.5m in residential streets and 3.0m on major roads with commercial activities. Why don’t we see these norms being implemented? The City Development Plan for Chennai Metropolitan Area confirms that capacity of almost all roads in the present system is reduced due to poor quality of riding surface, inadequate pedestrian pavement, poor lighting conditions and lack of properly designed intersections. Permanent and temporary encroachment of footpaths and carriageways has worsened the situation. If this isn’t enough to justify the need for a pedestrian friendly city, then one could also look at the increasing pollution levels within the city.

Reports state that the air pollution levels in Chennai are well above permissible limits (suspended particulate matter (SPM) ranging from 264 to 451 against the permissible limit of 200, carbon monoxide (CO) ranging from 1908 to 4198 μ-g/m3 against the permissible limit of 2000), leading to health hazards that none of the citizens can escape.

It is important for the city to amend the existing transport plans to give utmost importance to the interests of pedestrians and bicyclists which constitute the majority within the city. If majority of the commuters within the city comprise of walkers and bicyclists, then there is no reason as to why the interests of these sections of the society should go largely ignored.

Contributed by – Somya Sethuraman, a Researcher for the Transparent Chennai team of the Centre for Development Finance, IFMR

1 Badami, MG. (2009) “Urban Transport Policy as if People and the Environment Mattered: Pedestrian Accessibility the First Step” Economic and Political Weekly, Special Articles, August 15 2009
2“Walk Urban, Demand, Constraints and Measurement of the Urban Pedestrian Environment”, The World Bank Group, Transport Papers, April 2008

“Why do car owners expect the city to make room for them to park their private property? Parking is not a legal right.”
“Chennai city’s car owners form a minority, yet they possess maximum political power, enough to influence Chennai’s transport plans.”
“The poor agitate, while the rich operate.”

With these and other provocative thoughts, Enrique Penalosa, the former mayor of Bogota who visited Chennai recently, turned our prejudices towards auto owners on their heads!1 Penalosa during his talk at Anna University, Chennai in November 2009 that I happened to attend, discussed the possible transformation of Chennai’s transport system into one that is friendly to the city’s environment and its citizens. Chennai has recently seen an explosion of plans for transport projects focusing on high speed transport corridors, bridges and flyovers and a planned metro rail2. Penalosa argued that while infrastructure projects such as these sometimes contribute towards smooth flow of traffic in the short run, these alone cannot be the long term solution to traffic management within the city. More flyovers and roads make it easier to ride and harder to walk, and eventually lead to increased motor vehicle ownership, which again requires ever greater numbers of flyovers and roads. Clearly, with the limited space and capacity in the city, and the increasing pressures on the environment from cars, this vicious circle cannot be a sustainable solution.

Penalosa said that such projects do not make sense when you look at statistics. Chennai’s numbers prove this: in a group of 100 residents, 38 travel by bus, 4 by train, 30 walk, 14 travel by cycle, 7 travel by two-wheeler, and 5 by other modes. Only 2 out of a hundred travel by car! Building more flyovers to accommodate the small percentage of car users and building a metro rail which not many can afford are clear cut cases of social exclusion. The result of this over-emphasis on flyovers and highways and negligence with respect to walkers has had adverse implications – Forty two percent of road accidents in Chennai involve pedestrians and ten per cent of them involve cyclists. However, Penalosa argued that this bias towards automobiles is not just a problem of the government – we, the citizens, need to stop viewing automobile ownership as being closely linked to high social status.

Penalosa offered some interesting policy prescriptions to decrease private car use: Strengthen the public transport system and make the usage of cars more expensive through taxes on cars and parking, so that revenues from this can be used to subsidize public transport. But not just any kind of public transport: Penalosa advocated for the cheapest and easiest form of public transport — buses.

Penalosa does seem to have a valid point to make because I just came across a recent study by CSE which stated that it takes 60 cars to carry 90 people, but only one bus!3 Yet, I figured out through data sources that Chennai city has largely ignored its buses. There is acute overcrowding in buses during peak hours. Overcrowding is as high as one hundred and fifty per cent in certain routes as the supply is inadequate. As a result, crowds at the bus stops and spillover on the carriageways has become common. The waiting time at the bus stops has also increased. Meanwhile, private vehicle ownership has skyrocketed. The total number of motor vehicles in CMA has increased from 144,282 in 1984 to 1,674,185 in 2005. The vehicle population has grown at the rate of fifty per cent per annum during this period, owing largely to the growth in two wheelers and cars. The number of two-wheelers has grown even faster – from 87,000 in 1984 to 1,266,114 in 2005, at the rate of about sixty five per cent per annum. The number of motorcars has also increased significantly4.

Transport policy needs to be people-centric. A city with bicycle lanes, pedestrian friendly roads, and an excellent bus network is not only socially inclusive, but also one that is far more environmentally sustainable in the long run. Penalosa’s provocative lecture was a clear indication that the transport authorities need to re-align their policies and strategies in accordance with what the ‘majority’ of the citizens desire.

Contributed by – Somya Sethuraman, a Researcher for the Transparent Chennai team of the Centre for Development Finance, IFMR

1 http://beta.thehindu.com/news/cities/Chennai/article52673.ece
2 http://www.hindu.com/2010/02/28/stories/2010022850220100.htm
3 Footfalls: Obstacle Course to Livable Cities, Right to Clean Air Campaign, 2009, Centre for Science and Environment
4http://jnnurm.nic.in/nurmudweb/toolkit/CDP_CHENNAI.PDF

Certain things that I noticed about Chennai in the three years that I spent here are quite peculiar. First, busy roads are suddenly closed down, unannounced, for renovation or for a ‘VIP’ visit. All cities in India experience this, but in Chennai it happens too often to go unnoticed. Second, there is no clear definition of a ‘main road’. Buses, trucks and all kinds of other heavy motor vehicles seem to pass the narrowest of all roads with houses on either side. What is more shocking is to see kids playing on these roads, completely oblivious of the traffic around them. Third, this city doesn’t seem to invest in pukka roads. So one fine day when it rains, the road disappears and all that is left of it is potholes. In spite of all this, I love this city because of its beaches, its simplicity and its reasonably good public transport system.

One evening, after a tiring day at work, I decided to walk back home from Teynampet to Gandhinagar in Adyar. Starting at around 7pm, I expected to be home in an hour’s time. Teynampet to Gandhinagar should be around 6-7kms but the benefit of walking is that you can walk through one-ways, traffic jams and even blocked roads. So for all you know, walking back could in fact be faster than traveling in a motor vehicle within the city! While not much seems to be in place for the pedestrians in this city, it is made worse by the pedestrians themselves who mostly jaywalk. The end result is chaos, with sudden brakes being applied by vehicles and long leaps of narrow escapes made by pedestrians from one side of the road to the other. Since I had left office at the peak hour when most are travelling back home, I knew it was not exactly going to be a pleasant walk. The first leg of my walk was from my office to Nandanam. What really upset me during the walk were the uneven and discontinuous footpaths. Every commercial building/housing complex on my way seemed to have created their own walkway outside their premises, of different widths. Added to this, there were two wheelers parked on the footpath, which meant that I had to hop down to the main road in the middle of the traffic and then hop back to a new footpath of a different width and height. Finally, the foul smell during the walk just killed the fun. Men seem to urinate anywhere they feel like, as if all the walls and footpaths in Chennai are nothing but urinals. Obviously, the experience was far from pleasant.

But as I turned from Nandanam to Kotturpuram, I was pleasantly surprised. The area was well-lit, had a really nice park to my left, and the bridge built over Adyar river was constructed keeping in mind the pedestrians. However, expecting cycle lanes is a bit too idealistic here. I decided to walk via the Kotturpuram market which was very crowded, with traffic running in all directions. No sign of any footpath/signal on the way. And worse, street hawkers had encroached upon both the pedestrian space and even blocked half of the road. What I found even more astonishing is a temple right in the middle of the road! So devotees stand outside the temple during ‘archanai’, fully immersed, in the midst of the traffic and noise! Yet, walking from Kotturpuram to Gandhinagar was a fairly nice experience, and since the beach is closer to Adyar, the cool breeze calmed me down. It was 9pm when I reached home, thanks to the coffee break that I had taken at Nandanam CCD. Luckily, I used the washroom in CCD because all along my walk back home I could spot only one public convenience at Kotturpuram signal and that also was stinking from a distance of 200m. Only men who feel free to urinate anywhere in the city seemed to be using the public toilet. I realized I should have just walked past Kotturpuram and hit the IIT flyover to reach Gandhinagar rather than the stupid shortcut through the market. Even though the walk would have been longer, the roads are well lit and pedestrian friendly, at least till you hit the crossing at IIT flyover, a place where accidents occur on a daily basis.

When I got back home, I hurriedly went in for a shower because my eyes were burning and my feet felt extremely dirty. I made up my mind to wear walking shoes and fully covered clothes for my future walkathons.

Contributed by – Somya Sethuraman, a Researcher for the Transparent Chennai team of the Centre for Development Finance, IFMR