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What are the biggest challenges to walkability in Indian cities?
Walkability in Indian cities is often an afterthought, or worse, a non-thought. The infrastructure for walking is not treated as a priority despite its potential to foster healthier, more equitable cities. This results in an undesirable and unsafe walking environment, forcing pedestrians to navigate poorly designed or neglected spaces.
On a broader level, the biggest "software" challenge is the lack of civic and governmental commitment to improving walkability. There is insufficient energy and focus on making walking a safe and appealing choice.
At the "hardware" level, several governance issues exacerbate the problem.
Enforcement of design guidelines: India has robust design standards for pedestrian infrastructure, comparable to global benchmarks. However, the lack of proactive implementation and monitoring means these guidelines largely remain on paper.
Unregulated hawking: Unlike other Asian countries where hawking is an organized activity, India's lack of planning has led to informal, unregulated hawking. High-footfall areas often become congested, leaving little room for pedestrians. While guidelines do exist to accommodate hawking without impeding walkability, they are rarely enforced. While little heed is paid to actually increase the square footage of well-designed and connected municipal markets.
Parking issues: The unchecked growth of private vehicles has turned streets into parking lots, squeezing out pedestrians. The imbalance is stark—vehicles occupy valuable public space often for free, while people pay exorbitant rents for basic housing. Addressing this requires tough questions about how much public space can be allocated for parking and developing pragmatic solutions to balance walking, hawking, and vehicular needs along our streets and roads.
What are your suggestion to make cities pedestrian-friendly?
To make cities truly pedestrian-friendly, efforts are required at multiple levels:
Policy Level: There must be clear accountability for walking infrastructure. Citizens should know which authority is responsible for substandard footpaths. A robust system is needed to address walkability issues locally. For instance, our Pedestrian Manifesto for Mumbai advocates for creating Non-Motorized Transport (NMT) cells in administrative subdivisions with populations exceeding 100,000. These cells can address local issues like intersection safety and footpath design on a case-by-case basis.
Government Level: Governments must act on the wealth of data already available. Surveys such as the MMRDA Comprehensive Transport Study and documents like the MCGM Comprehensive Mobility Plan and Mumbai Climate Action Plan consistently highlight walking as the top mode of transport and the need to further prioritise and encourage it. Yet, tangible improvements in pedestrian infrastructure remain limited. Authorities must prioritize building and maintaining quality walking infrastructure to make the last-mile journey safe and convenient.
Citizen Level: Citizens must overcome apathy and actively demand better walking conditions. Currently, there's a significant gap between the frustration expressed online and meaningful action, such as supporting advocacy efforts. At The Walking Project, we’ve seen inconsistent donations despite working tirelessly for over a year and a half with us reaching financial crisis situations multiple times. Advocacy needs funding and support, and citizens must "put their money where their mouth is" to back civil society organizations striving for change.
How is The Walking Project helping make roads safer for pedestrians?
At The Walking Project, we recognize that walkability is a multifaceted challenge requiring systemic solutions. We focus on three key areas:
Community Engagement: Building grassroots movements to foster awareness and collective action.
Action-Oriented Interventions: Collaborating with municipalities for targeted improvements within defined geographies. These can include redesigning specific intersections or ensuring footpath maintenance.
Knowledge Dissemination: Creating platforms to educate the public about the nuances of walkability. By spreading knowledge from experts to the masses, we aim to build a solid foundation for sustainable advocacy.
We emphasize addressing root causes over repetitive pilot projects. Many issues stem from flawed standard operating procedures; fixing these at the source prevents their escalation in smaller cities as they grow, while simultaneously undo the damage already done in our metro cities.
Our work is dedicated to helping people understand the key elements that make cities walkable, motivating government bodies to implement essential changes for creating pedestrian-friendly spaces, and sharing this knowledge nationwide to inspire replication in other cities. We would love to have many more branches and many more such Walking Projects across the nation.
