According to the 2016 Comprehensive Mobility Plan by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, 51% of trips in Mumbai are by walking. Notably, 72.5% of trips to educational institutions and 60% of trips involving public transport start and end with walking.
Despite these figures, Mumbai’s infrastructure is not pedestrian-friendly, and road safety remains a significant concern. Recent projects like the coastal road and the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link prioritise cars over pedestrians.
Elections and pedestrians’ needs
With the assembly elections approaching, the Walking Project, an NGO that works towards creating a safe, convenient, and enjoyable walking experience, has released its manifesto. The organisation conducts neighbourhood walks, online and offline talks to engage the public, and footpath mapping activities to assess their quality.
The manifesto, “Walking Project Pedestrian Manifesto 2024” highlights the challenges pedestrians face, encouraging people to demand safer, more accessible walking infrastructure from their leaders.
Read more: Scenes from a community walk in Mumbai
A manifesto for safe and pedestrian-friendly roads
- Establish a Non-Motorised Transport Cell: The Walking Project’s manifesto calls for setting up an NMT cell for every urban administrative subdivision with a population of over one lakh. It must have permanent staff including urban planners and architects, who can provide tailor-made solutions for specific locations. The cell should be responsible for identifying and designing improvements to walking and cycling infrastructure.
- Create hawking zones: Unregulated hawking on the streets of Mumbai often results in traffic snarls and problems for pedestrians to find space. The solution is to create well-defined hawking zones. This will enable a streamlined distribution of hawkers and ease traffic jams, especially outside railway stations. It will also give hawkers fair opportunities to earn a living.
- Design a comprehensive parking policy: Car parking is proving to be a big obstacle to footpath widening. This can be addressed through a comprehensive parking policy, which will gauge how much parking space is required and demarcate legally allocated parking areas. The money earned from this can be put back into public transport and walking infrastructure.
- Implement traffic calming measures: This will positively impact driver behaviour and create a safer pedestrian experience. These could include improving visibility at intersections, tabletop crossings to reduce vehicle speed and interventions like road diet.
- Initiate inclusive steps: Not all footpaths are accessible to wheelchair users or people with mobility challenges, as they may not have slopes. This also contributes to general pedestrian discomfort. While completely overhauling footpaths is too expensive, their edges could be updated with standard, accessible slopes.
| “India is spending a lot of capital expenditure on public transport infrastructure in terms of the metro, but last mile connectivity still remains a major issue. Even with existing infrastructure like railway stations, bus stops etc, last-mile connectivity is a huge issue. It is well known that walking is good for your health, and that it is sustainable. It does not require any internal combustion engine. It does not produce any emissions. Now is the time when the city of Mumbai and India at large can invest in creating better walkable infrastructure so that a lot more last-mile journeys can be done by walking to create a healthier society, safer society for everyone. There has to be a concerted push to improve walkability.” Vedant Mhatre, Programme Manager at Walking Project |
- Improve walking conditions: More than 80 lakh passengers travel by Mumbai’s suburban railway system on a weekday according to a report released by Mumbai Railway Vikas Corporation Limited (MRVC). Around 60% of people walk to their destinations from railway stations. Wider footpaths, standardised signage, and accessibility features, especially around bus depots, train and metro stations will help.
- Have pedestrian-friendly corridors: LBS Road and SV Road should become pedestrian-friendly corridors as they are two of the longest, continuous arterial roads in Mumbai. They are also used by pedestrians to reach railway stations. There should be a minimum footpath width of four metres and consistent road widths for vehicles, with ramps for wheelchairs, street furniture, adequate parking and effective regulation of hawkers.
- Demarcate space for planting trees: With urban heat becoming a major problem, tree cover is necessary along streets and footpaths. Suitable spaces should be identified and demarcated for tree planting, ensuring existing utilities do not stunt their growth. The municipality or urban forestry organisations could handle tree planting, while a third party should monitor tree health for transparency and accountability.
Walking Project hopes that citizens will support and promote the manifesto and advocate for a healthy pedestrian ecosystem by ensuring the candidates contesting assembly elections prioritise pedestrian-friendly policies.
| You can find the Walking Project Pedestrian Manifesto here. |