Indian city plans pedestrian walk

By Geeta Pandey
BBC News, Delhi

Pavements are fast disappearing in the city

Hundreds of people in the south Indian city of Madras (Chennai) are to walk for the "rights of the pedestrian".

Organisers say walking is becoming one of the most hazardous and difficult activities in this city of 4.3m people.

Almost 1,200 people die in road accidents every year and nearly 50% of them are pedestrians.

Madras has 1.6m cars and two-wheelers and as their numbers continue to grow, a huge drive has started to widen the existing roads and build new flyovers.

'Walkathon'

"We want to reclaim the spaces which are rightfully ours, which have been taken over for road widening projects," says Anusha Hariharan, a co-ordinator with the Madras-based group Walking Classes Unite.

The group has organised a "walkathon" from Marina Beach to the Foreshore Estate Open Grounds, a distance of 6.5kms (four miles), on Sunday afternoon.

"We hope to raise public awareness about the rights of the pedestrians, cyclists and those who use public transport because they have to use the roads," Ms Hariharan says.

In the absence of pavements, people have to walk on streets

Madras is not a modern-day city. Established in the 17th century by India's British rulers, it has developed into a major industrial and administrative hub straining under a creaking infrastructure.

The city is the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

Over the years, the public transport network of Madras has not kept pace with the growth of the city's population.

So anyone who can afford to has bought private vehicles.

The past decade of rapid economic growth in the country has seen the number of professionals and middle classes multiply.

The easy availability of car loans - admittedly a little harder to come by in these days of credit crunch - has seen more and more vehicles being added to the roads every day.

"Chennai roads and lanes are narrow. And pavements and footpaths have become a casualty in a bid to accommodate the ever-growing number of cars," says Ms Hariharan.

This puts pedestrians, cyclists and users of public transport at grave risk.

"Children, the elderly and the disabled face the maximum risk as they are forced to navigate roads without footpaths or pedestrian crossings," says Venkat, another co-ordinator at Walking Classes Unite.

"Billions of rupees are spent on building new flyovers and road widening projects, but pavements remain ill-maintained and totally neglected. In many places they are unusable," he says.

'Frightening'

The group says only 19% of Chennai's population uses private cars, but they take up nearly 75% of the road space, .

The vast majority of people are dependent on public transport, but their share of road use has been steadily shrinking.

Pedestrians say they feel unsafe in Chennai

"We want wide and well-maintained footpaths, we want pedestrian crossings, we want dedicated cycle lanes, we want to reclaim spaces which were originally ours," says Ms Hariharan.

That is music to the ears of Bharti, a computer professional in Chennai.

"It is frightening to be a pedestrian on Chennai's roads," she says.

"Pavements should be there for people to walk. But here, people are not able to cross the road easily, we have to wait for long to cross to the other side."

Pavements in most areas simply don't exist, she said.

"T-Nagar is a busy market area, it's generally very crowded, there is heavy traffic, but there are no pavements. So you have to walk on the road along side the traffic. It is scary."