ROAD SAFETY - IN DEPTH RESEARCH

The increasing traffic, road accidents and deteriorating sidewalks in and around the city, inspired Transparent Chennai into doing a more detailed study on road safety. Newspaper reports of road accidents in the city on a regular basis and the plight of pedestrians being victimised in these accidents strengthened our motive to study the pedestrian facilities in the city.

Thus, we began by gathering the basic information about the stock of pedestrian infrastructure in the city by filing RtIs (Right to Information) to the Chennai Corporation, City Road Division (State Highway Department), Traffic Police and the Transport commissioner’s office. Apart from this, we also did a literature survey and collected guidelines for pedestrian infrastructure, newspaper articles pertaining road accidents and pedestrian issues and other government reports mentioning any details about road, traffic, vehicle, pedestrians and road safety at large.

From all of the above, we learned that the city has 25 pedestrian subways of which 8 are being maintained by the Corporation and the remaining 17 by the City Road Division (State Highway Department). There are 32 foot over bridges being maintained by the Corporation of Chennai.

Apart from this, we have the length and width of sidewalks from almost all the zones in the city, road, ward and zone wise. We also have a consolidated length of roads in each ward and the stretches occupied by hawkers as per the Corporation. Check our downloads page for datasets related to road safety.

We also have a list of traffic signals, one ways, pedestrian crossings and accident hotspots in the city and many other related data collected from the Chennai Traffic Police. We are in the process of mapping these and have also shared them on the downloads page.

The Indian Road Congress has formulated certain guideline for pedestrian infrastructure in IRC-103-1988. According to the guidelines, the width of the sidewalks should be minimum 1.5 m without obstruction. Chennai has only about 25 kms of such sidewalks – most of which fall under zone 6. Walking constitutes of over 30% of the all trips made in the city and less than 3% of the road is allocated to this mode. The lack of quality pedestrian infrastructure forces the pedestrian to walk on the roads causing a threat to their lives and slowing down traffic. Thus, road expansion at the cause of marginalising pedestrian facilities does not result in speeding up the traffic. In this year’s budget, the Corporation of Chennai has allocated only Rs 45,01,000 for pavements and pedestrian facilities.

On an average 1,780 vehicles are being added on Chennai roads every day without a corresponding increase in motorable road space. The increase in number of vehicles adds further pressure on the traffic and is seen as an increasing cause of accidents.  Road safety tax was levied in lieu of creating surplus funds to take measures for reducing accidents in the city. The road safety tax was levied in August 2009 on all newly registered vehicles and varied from Rs 250 for motor cycles, Rs 1500 for Light Motor Vehicles and Rs 2500 for other vehicles. The Road Safety tax collected in the financial year 2010-2011 (April 2010 to February 2011) was a whooping Rs. 75,43,54,809 while the money allocated to Chennai city under the road safety fund was a mere Rs 2,31,55,000.