FIRST STEPS
Reclaiming Delhi for pedestrians…….CORDELIA JENKINS
Reclaiming Delhi for pedestrians…….CORDELIA JENKINS
Going for a walk in Delhi can be perilous activity. As anyone who has tried to traverse the city’s byperilous activity. As anyone who oing for a walk in Delhi can be a ways on foot knows, there are streams of traffic to dodge, high curbs to climb, piles of detritus to skirt and, as this year’s heavy monsoon proved, blocked drains and flooded pathways to navigate.
Construction for the Commonwealth Games (CWG), as well as for the Metro and new flyovers only made matters worse this summer. But over the past year, the Delhi government and private partners have been working behind the scenes on improvements that, if success- ful, could transform the city into a pedes- trian-and-cycle-friendly metropolis. It’s a significant move for a city in which 34.67% people do not use any form of transport, but walk to their destinations according to a survey conducted by Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES) in 2008, which also found that two out of five roads in Delhi are without a sidewalk.
Authorities are now seeking to take back the city for the neglected pedestrian and hoping to effect changes through the Unified Traffic and Transportation Infra- structure (Planning and Engineering) Centre (Uttipec). Set up in 2008 as an in- ter-departmental organization, Uttipec has members from all the major traffic, transportation and city planning depart- ments of Delhi, including the Delhi De- velopment Authority, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the New Delhi Munici- pal Council as well as the Delhi Metro. It reports directly to Delhi’s highest civilian authority, the lieutenant governor, and has produced street design guidelines that set a new standard for road building in the capital. Furthermore, there’s poten- tial for the guidelines to be adopted at the national level, says Romi Roy, senior con- sultant at Uttipec and part of the team that drafted the street design plan.
Roy has been made a member of a sub- committee on urban transport that may look to incorporate them as part of na- tional standards in the future. This year around 40km of Delhi roads have been re- built in line with Uttipec’s guidelines, which require increased pavement space for walkers, new street lighting, proper storm water drainage, cycle tracks and tree-lined borders to be built on all but the smallest of lanes.
Stretches of Lodhi Road, the area around ITO, and Indraprashta and Vikas Marg have already been remodelled, imi- tating the best practises of foreign cities, including San Francisco, London, Shang- hai and Barcelona. The premise is that the street is a public space as valuable to the residents of a city as any park or plaza.
Delhi’s chaotic street system has been well documented. Last year saw the publi- cation of BBC correspondent Sam Miller’s book, Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity, in which Miller attempts to tour the city on foot, recounting the hazardous adven- tures he has along the way. As a result, Miller is a keen advocate of improving Delhi’s byways. I’m convinced that pave- ments should be the most important public spaces in most urban areas, he says, and they are definitely not at the mo- ment in Delhi. Too much emphasis has been on motorized transport, and not enough on how we reach the newly built bus stops and metro stations.
Uttipec now hopes to divert the city’s focus away from cars and towards the pe- destrians, cyclists and bus passengers who make up the majority of road users.
I think there is a major mental shift now, says Roy, of the attitude the govern- ment has taken. Though the proposal would transform the city’s atmosphere, many of the changes are simple and low- cost, says Marie Hélène Zérah, a research coordinator in urban dynamics at the Centre de Sciences Humaines in Delhi.
I think there is a major mental shift now, says Roy, of the attitude the govern- ment has taken. Though the proposal would transform the city’s atmosphere, many of the changes are simple and low- cost, says Marie Hélène Zérah, a research coordinator in urban dynamics at the Centre de Sciences Humaines in Delhi.
Zérah is encouraged by the guidelines, though she points out that lower budget projects are often vulnerable in a city fond of large-scale, high-cost developments.
For me it’s very convincing, she says.
For me it’s very convincing, she says.
This kind of project needs coordinating at a high level and Uttipec is a body that can enforce. It’s critical to reorganize space here, Delhi is extremely fragmented in many ways.
The shift towards public transport could potentially create business oppor- tunities, providing a new arena for com- panies to target advertising at the public.
In July, the Delhi Tourism and Transport Development Corporation (DTTDC) contracted out the work of building Del- hi’s street furniture to private advertisers.
BIG Street, Reliance Broadcast Network’s out-of-home advertising initiative, signed up to produce and maintain street furni- ture such as benches, dustbins, police booths, public toilets and vending booths for the next 22 years. So far, furniture has been installed in three zones, around the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the Yamuna Sports Complex and the Games village.
In July, the Delhi Tourism and Transport Development Corporation (DTTDC) contracted out the work of building Del- hi’s street furniture to private advertisers.
BIG Street, Reliance Broadcast Network’s out-of-home advertising initiative, signed up to produce and maintain street furni- ture such as benches, dustbins, police booths, public toilets and vending booths for the next 22 years. So far, furniture has been installed in three zones, around the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, the Yamuna Sports Complex and the Games village.
BIG Street is working with Delhi Metro to produce digital information kiosks at 25 Metro stations, where the potential audi- ence for advertising is at least one million passengers per day. The touch-screen ki- osks will provide information on DMRC’s (Delhi Metro Rail Corp. Ltd) services, ticket rates and station facility informa- tion to travellers.
This public-private partnership ap- proach to infrastructure development creates a win-win for all, the common public, the civic administration and pri- vate players like BIG Street, said Rabe. T.Iyer, business head of BIG Street, via email. In the process we are creating pre- mium advertising spaces that are actually enhancing the overall beauty of the city- scape, he added.
However, experts, while welcoming the initiatives, caution that these changes would work only if all elements of the re- design of streets come together at the same time–a lesson that has been high- lighted by the uneven results of CWG con- struction.
As Zérah points out, though large-scale transport projects such as the bus rapid transit system (BRTS) and the Metro promise to move huge numbers of people quickly and effectively around the city, the connections between these systems and people’s homes are still substandard.
The way forward is to show the impor- tance of these local solutions beyond the larger systems like BRTS, Zérah says, adding that at the moment such decisions remain in the realm of public policy de- sign.
A luxury policy planners can ill afford, given that 17% of the country’s cars run in Delhi–more than Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and West Bengal com- bined. On the other hand, if attitudes are shifting, as Roy suggests they are, in- creased public pressure on the Delhi transport authorities could provide the momentum the city needs to make travel- ling without a car a convenient option.