A long way to reclaim streets for pedestrians

Hindustan Times

a day ago

The Supreme Court's intervention on May 14 to ensure the availability of unobstructed, disabled-friendly footpaths for people is expected to help prioritise pedestrian needs in road design that past court orders, legislation and policies have struggled to achieve. Parked two-wheelers block a footpath near the BMC headquarters in Mumbai. (HT Photo)
Invoking Article 21 of the Constitution, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty, the apex court asked all states and Union Territories to finalise guidelines within two months and file compliance reports, which will be heard on August 1.
Over the years, some cities have made progress but improvements in walking infrastructure remained localised and not easily scalable. Cautioning that political and administrative inconsistencies hindered decision-making and policy implementation, experts emphasise the urgency for rethinking mobility to pursue the walkability agenda.
Pedestrians in the mobility pyramid
Pedestrians deserve a fair share of road space. They have the numbers, and space is not a constraint because India has the world's second-largest road network after the US. But an audit directed by the Supreme Court Committee on Road Safety showed that in 2024, only 56% of Delhi roads had footpaths. A similar trend was observed in all other cities surveyed.
Footpaths are the backbone of mobility and a measure of urban liveability. They ensure the safety of pedestrians, the most vulnerable of all road users. They provide access to bus and Metro stations and make local destinations such as shops, parks, schools, and medical facilities walkable. A well-planned footpath network can reduce reliance on vehicles, offering health and environmental benefits. It is also a vibrant social space.
Building a footpath involves easy masonry work and no big investment. Its maintenance only ensures that the walkways are not dug up, rutted, littered, or used as a toilet, parking lot, or unregulated vending space. Yet, even as footpaths are neglected, a broken walkway rarely triggers the same public outcry as a potholed road.
False perception
Poor-quality footpaths are a political problem rather than a technical one, said Rutul Joshi, an associate professor at CEPT University. He argued that concerns such as street vendors and parked vehicles are often offered as excuses for not planning wide enough footpaths. This 'in-your-face, unapologetic position', said Joshi, is reflected in the absence of walkable footpaths in much of Ahmedabad, except for some stray exceptions such as Chimanlal Girdharlal Road. This retail hub was renovated in the mid-1990s with boulevard-style walkways and refurbished in 2019 with 10-foot-wide multi-utility zones, including footpaths.
Cars hog the road space, and car owners dominate the public discourse. 'This group is often reluctant to yield even a small amount of road space to others,' said Shekhar Singh, the municipal commissioner of Pimpri Chinchwad, a Tier-2 industrial city in Maharashtra that actively promotes non-motorised transport (NMT).
'Even efforts to convert the leftmost part of the road, which is often a dusty strip where no vehicles run and only people walk, into a footpath are met with resistance from motorists.'
Design standards optional
The Indian Road Congress (IRC), a 91-year-old apex body of highway engineers, sets frameworks, and road-building agencies across the country are expected to follow them. The 'Guidelines for Pedestrian Safety', revised in 2022, say all streets with vehicular speeds exceeding 15 kmph should have segregated pedestrian space. If the roads are too narrow for a footpath, design shared streets with speed bumps to calm traffic.
The pedestrian zone must be continuous, with a uniform height of 150 mm, and a width of 1.8 to 2.5 meters, depending on land use. The space must accommodate two wheelchair users simultaneously and be entirely free of obstructions.
However, IRC guidelines are not statutory, so there is nothing illegal about not following them. But even where they are followed, they are applied selectively, said Abhijit Lokre of The Urban Lab Foundation in Ahmedabad. 'The engineers will ensure that the carriageways are built as per IRC, but they will never insist that the footpath be according to IRC.'
The SC road safety committee audit showed that in Delhi, which has some of the broadest road spaces in the country, only 26% pavements were of the width and height required by IRC standards.
Free for all
As a result, footpaths are too narrow and obstructed by poles, pillars, signage, power transformers, bus stops and toilets. In places, stormwater drains covered precariously with slabs are passed off as walkways.
The road department often decides the dimensions, with no drawings, just instructions to the contractor, explained Ranjit Gadgil, programme director of Parisar, a Pune-based non-governmental organisation advocating road safety. Since there is no approval at the design stage, holding anyone accountable for bad footpaths is difficult.
Each city has its peculiar challenges. In Patiala, for example, some roads have been resurfaced to the same height as the footpaths. With no segregation, pedestrians find themselves walking in the path of moving traffic, said Ravee Singh Ahluwalia, founder of Patiala Foundation, a non-profit working on road safety. Patiala was the first district in Punjab to recognise the 'Right to Walk' as a fundamental right under Article 21 and notify a district-level policy on walkability in 2023.
Walkers edged out
Where footpaths exist, shopkeepers and occupants of adjacent properties encroach on them. While street vendors are the most frequently blamed, more physical damage is done by parked vehicles and two-wheelers taking shortcuts.
A retired civil engineer from Delhi said road-owning agencies sometimes deliberately raise the height of footpaths so cars and two-wheelers can't climb them. In safeguarding footpaths from illegal parking, they also make them inaccessible to pedestrians.
Apart from policies to promote NMT, many cities, such as Delhi (2019), Bengaluru (2021), Pune (2016), and Ahmedabad (2023), have formulated parking regulations. Delhi's policy on walkability, which was also notified in August 2019, has strong elements of parking reforms, but there's little to show in progress.
Subterranean chaos
Urban roads are more than just traffic facilitators. They support eight infrastructure networks: water, drainage, sewerage, electricity, piped gas, optical fibre, streetlights, and traffic surveillance, said Srikanth Viswanathan, executive director of Jana Urban Space Foundation.
The drains and sewer lines under the footpath often leak, backflow, or hit dead ends, damaging the surface. Multiple agencies control underground pipes, making it difficult to pinpoint faults. Dug-up footpaths are not only a walking hazard, but the unending road-cutting and repairs also alter the original design and dimensions of footpaths for good.
Formulated in 2011, Jana Urban Space Foundation's Tender S.U.R.E. (Specifications for Urban Roads Execution) guidelines offer solutions. They suggest utilities below be arranged in underground corridors with easy access points, that lane widths be uniform, and that financial sustainability be achieved through joint tendering and the prevention of road cutting.
'While the first Tender S.U.R.E road, built in front of UB City (an upscale high-rise complex), was privately funded, we have since had five successive chief ministers across three political parties supporting the guidelines. Today, Bengaluru has over 100 kms of such roads and footpaths, all funded by the state government,' said Viswanathan.
According to Jana Urban Space, more than 250 km of Tender S.U.R.E. roads and footpaths are under various stages of implementation across 18 cities in five states in India, including Karnataka, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Assam.
Beyond engineering
Viswanathan said that instead of leaving roads to civil engineers, who focus on moving motor vehicles and not people, city administrations must give the job to urban designers, who can incorporate citizen-centricity and environmental considerations.
However, very few cities have attempted to bring urban designers on board. In 2017, the Pune Municipal Corporation made a head start by creating an urban design cell and hiring professionals under its urban street design programme. Unfortunately, Lokre said, the initiative stopped when the top officials moved out.
In March this year, the Maharashtra government announced a plan to establish urban design cells in all urban civic bodies. While the primary goal of these cells would be to preserve cultural and architectural aesthetics, it is hoped that street design will eventually be included in the mandate, and urban designers will get hired on a permanent basis.
Change management and continuity
Successful policy implementation requires alignment among administrators. Shekhar Singh said that in Pimpri Chinchwad, the 'urban streetscaping' projects are progressing because three consecutive commissioners have maintained momentum from planning to execution.
But it is not dependent on commissioners alone. Cities must have a strong team with the right people to maintain institutional memory. So, last year, PCMC set up an urban mobility department with a dedicated budget. Led by a joint city engineer, it includes transport planners, urban designers and multiple experts.
Additionally, to fund Harit Setu, a flagship project to promote the 15-minute city concept and connect all facilities through walking and cycling infrastructure, PCMC on June 10 listed its green municipal bond on the Bombay Stock Exchange and raised ₹ 200 crores. PCMC successfully raised ₹200 crore through the green bond, which was oversubscribed 5.13 times.
In Punjab, the Road Traffic Institute Centre was established in 2022 under a high court order. It collaborates with 12 agencies to enhance walking infrastructure throughout the state. Acknowledging that 'bureaucratic hurdles sometimes slow down progress,' Punjab's traffic adviser and the centre's director Navdeep Asija emphasised that institutions such as this help maintain continuity.
For now, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana and SAS Nagar-Mohali have been identified as the 'demonstration sites', where 120 kms of arterial roads once fixed will provide the template of 'walkable streets' to the rest of Punjab. While several districts, including Patiala and Jalandhar, have adopted the Right to Walk policy, the overall state-level draft still awaits legislative approval.
Mukti Advani, a principal scientist at the Central Road Research Institute, stressed the need for evaluations in policy, budget, and infrastructure to identify gaps and enhance user satisfaction. Such audits, she said, will highlight gaps and help authorities improve.
The IRC guidelines suggest a walk score to assess the pedestrian experience, considering factors such as traffic volume, shade, streetlights, security, walking surface, encroachment, public amenities, and accessibility features.
Chennai's example
Chennai was India's first city to adopt a non-motorised transport (NMT) policy in 2014, with the mandate that 60% of transport funds would go towards street transformation.
Between 2014 and 2019, Chennai invested an average of ₹72 crore annually in footpaths. It created over 170 km of pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. But the pace slowed down when the city shifted its focus to stormwater management to address frequent flooding, pointed out Aswathy Dilip, director South-Asia at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).
Between 2022 and 2025, footpath spending dropped to just ₹13 crore per year on average, with a modest recovery in FY 2024–25 to ₹25 crore. 'This was also when the city consistently spent ₹84 crore annually on road resurfacing and carriageway upgrades—highlighting a continued vehicle-centric bias,' she pointed out.
But there's been a renewed push: This year alone, the city has committed an investment of ₹200 crores for developing 170 kms of complete streets. Dilip also highlighted a lack of coordination among departments, leading to issues like dismantling footpaths without restoration during stormwater drain upgrades.
However, the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority, established in 2010 but becoming active only a decade later, has emerged as a platform for coordinated action across multiple agencies and jurisdictions, said Dilip. The impact of these changes will be visible over five to ten years.
A national push
Just as sanitation, toilets, and other civic upgrades have been prioritised on the national agenda, Viswanathan sought a similar effort for urban roads. 'Change will not happen at the local level; we need senior-level political support to scale up these projects, similar to what occurred in Karnataka.'
Ultimately, the goal should be to normalise pedestrian infrastructure and regard it as a fundamental civic responsibility that the administration must deliver in every town and city. 'Creating a walkable environment is not something civic bodies should seek praise for,' said Shekhar Singh. 'Our aspiration should be to make this process as routine as constructing a bitumen road, that is to create a standard template which becomes a rule for every engineer to follow.'