Transparent Chennai’s research on road safety and pedestrian infrastructure has so far shed light on the increasing number of road accidents in the city, and the type of vehicular traffic (scooterists, cyclists, autorickshaws, four wheelers etc) that is affected the most during these accidents. There has been so much hype about the limited space for pedestrians, yet not much of this information has been quantified to say anything meaningful. Transparent Chennai gathered information about pedestrian infrastructure in the city, and through this post we will share some of our key findings. The information was collected from the Corporation of Chennai, the city road division of the Highway Department and the Chennai Traffic Police.

By pedestrian infrastructure we mean any infrastructure that makes walking easier on roads. These can be categorised into pavements, subways and foot-over bridges, traffic signals and traffic calmer (zebra crossing, mid block crossing, speed breakers etc).

The city has a network of almost 830 km long stretches of footpath, the width of these vary from 0.6 meters to 3.5 meters (Table 1). There are 25 subways, of which 17 are maintained by the city road division of the Highway Department and 32 foot over bridges maintained by the Corporation of Chennai.

There are 218 traffic signals of which only 39 facilitate pedestrian movement.There are 29 CCTV camera points of which 12 are localized. There are 425 zebra crossings, 185 bumpy speed breakers most of which lie in the Annanagar division as it has many schools and other institutions. These are being maintained by the Chennai Traffic police.
According to a pedestrian guideline, IRC: 103-1988, the minimum width of a pavement should be 1.5m and unobstructed. However, over 52% of the sidewalks in the city are not even 1.5m wide.

Table 1: Distribution of pavements less than 1 m Zone wise

Table 2: Distribution of pavements 1.5m wide zone wise

Table 3: Inventory of pavements (Zone wise)

Source: Analysis done based on the data provided by individual zone offices collected from all the 10 zones through RTI filed on 27th January 2011

The authorities argue that building more pavements will result in encroachment by hawkers but the analysis shows that hawkers occupy only about 3.5% of all pavements in the city of which 63% lies in zone 8 and 3. Zone 8(Kodambakkam) which is the commercial hub of the city has a little over 5% of its footpath encroached by hawkers, while Zone 3 (Pattalam) has over 15% of its footpaths occupied by hawkers. Zone 2 has about 10% of its pavements encroached by hawkers. North Madras (Zone 1,2 and 3) is the most dense part of the city and has less than 13% of the total pavements of the city which accommodates 29% of the vending stretches in the city.

This analysis is based on the data records available with the zonal offices. Please see the Our Data section of the road safety research for raw data.

Roshan Toshniwal

After the public meeting on June 4th, we have been in discussion with the Chennai Traffic Police, Cityconnect and a couple of civic activists who have formed a traffic and transportation forum (TTF) to provide suggestive measures to ease traffic congestion at busy junctions in the city. The Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Mr. Sanjay Arora has been open to suggestions and has promised to experiment with the working solutions we provide, on a temporary basis.

We have initiated this exercise with the Vijaynagar junction at Velachery which has been identified as a nightmare for pedestrians to cross with vehicles coming from all directions. The Vijaynagar bus stand lies at a crossroad connecting Taramani, the Velachery Bye Pass road or 100 feet road and the Velachery main road. The presence of 3 big eateries (Mc Donald, KFC and Adayar Ananda Bhavan) and offices like Sutherland attracts congestion at this junction. The MRTS station and the DAV school are also in close vicinity to this junction. There is also a multiplex cum shopping mall being built on the main road abutting a 30 feet road which may attract more traffic.

These commercial establishments do not have adequate parking (not even as per norms which is 1 car and 1 two wheeler parking space for every 50 meter sq metres within the corporation area ) which forces people to park on the main roads and bye lanes, which then spills over onto the main road, choking traffic.

Although the road is 200 feet wide, there are only 4 vehicular lanes and the limited footpaths are encroached by shops on both sides of the road. There are open drains in what was to be a service lane and the parts where it is covered is being used for parking vehicles. The road has no mid block crossing/ refuge or a pedestrian grade separator and as the median is a three feet high concrete barricade, the pedestrian risks his life to cross over to the other side.

In the recent past, parts of this road were acquired by the highway department for road widening and apart from Sutherland and some electric poles, these are the only premises that still stand in the way. Apparently there is also a proposal for constructing a flyover in a lane that is opposite Sutherland, to ease pressure from the Vijaynagar junction. Some officials claim that the Sutherland premises have a part of the OSR (Open Space Reservation) land which the company has been reluctant to hand over.

Evolving a solution
So on 29th June the TTF called concerned officials from the Corporation of Chennai (Zone 10), the Electricity Board, both traffic and law and order policemen in-charge of the area, traffic expert Prof. KP Subramanium, officer in-charge of building the flyover at the junction, retired officials, area representative of MTC, an active resident from the area and us.
The representative from the Highway department suggested formulating a traffic and transportation committee at a state or city level which will focus on the traffic congestion and create holistic solutions. The formulation of the committee requires brainstorming sessions from all concerned departments and the civic society on how to deal with the traffic bottleneck and facilitate faster movement.

The junction needs to be redesigned based on the traffic survey and also take the surrounding land-use into account . The corporation will need to work with an iron hand when giving building permissions and ensuring that parking norms are followed. The buses parked opposite the Vijaynagar bus stand will also need to park away from the junction.
Please send us your suggestions so that it can also be incorporated.

- Roshan Toshniwal

Date: Saturday, June 4^th,  2011

Time: 11 AM – 1PM

Venue: Parvathy Hall, IFMR, No 24 Kothari Road, Nungambakkam, Chennai-600034

Transparent Chennai invites you to the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) on Kothari Road, at 11am on Saturday, June 4th to participate in a public meeting on road safety and pedestrian infrastructure in the city.

Road safety has increasingly become an important concern in Chennai. Roads are essential for the efficient movement of goods and people. But because of a lack of infrastructure and inefficient enforcement of traffic regulations, roads are dangerous places, especially for the most vulnerable users: pedestrians, cyclists, children, and the elderly.

By organizing a public meeting which will involve presentations from traffic experts, representatives from the relevant government agencies, and groups working on the issue of road safety, Transparent Chennai aims to understand how concerned citizens can understand the conditions of road safety in our city and take action to make our roads safer. We hope to develop a more nuanced discussion around the issue of road safety and pedestrian infrastructure, an especially important and urgent task considering the scale of new transport infrastructure projects in Chennai.

List of Speakers

Roshan Toshniwal: Transparent Chennai
Dr.K.P. Subramanium: Professor, Urban Engineering Department, Anna University
Prof. Abdur Razzak: HoD, School of Planning, Anna University
Rajiv Rajan: Co-ordinator at Disability Legislative Unit
Sonal Mishra: IPS, Traffic Police