‘Pedestrianization is the way forward for Mumbai’

MUMBAI: You don’t need to be elderly to twist your ankle on the cratered pavements of Mumbai. The young are just as likely to trip and break a bone if they don’t watch their step at all times.
Mumbai’s authorities have, so far, focused solely on building highways and flyovers for under 10% of the city’s population that travels by car, paying scant attention to pedestrians.
Urban planners, who have long raised their voice above the din of car horns and demanded better facilities for pedestrians, may well be pleasantly surprised with a slew of guidelines for footpaths in Mumbai that the BMC is working on. The guidelines aim at creating obstacle-free pavements on either side of the road.
The new guidelines are in sync with the norms in most international cities that are shunning cars for more environment-friendly modes of transport such as cycling and walking. London, for instance, has large stretches of dedicated cycling tracks and wide pavements that have spurred a culture of pedestrianization. Paris, with its boulevards and tree-lined avenues, has often been rated among the best cities to walk in by travel portals.
“India has the historical advantage of being able to see the damage that automobiles have done to cities in Europe, America and China. It can decide not to commit the same mistake,” New York-based anti-automobile crusader Mark Gorton had told TOI on a visit to India a few years ago.
Developed Western countries aren’t the only ones shunning cars for cycles and minimising the road for the pavement. Enrique Penalosa, mayor of Bogota from 1998 to 2000, has been hailed as a hero for sustainable cities, credited with building hundreds of kilometres of pavements, bicycle lanes and parks. He even pulled off a car-free day in Bogota in 2000.
Shreya Gadepalli, regional director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, believes pedestrianization is the way forward for Indian cities. “Across the world, people have realized that they have gone overboard with their fascination for automobiles. They have realized that they are sacrificing quality of life for speed. In Mumbai, as with most other Indian cities, only a very small percentage of the population uses cars, and yet cities are built as if they belong to car owners. The vast majority of people who walk, cycle or use public transport have been ignored. In a democracy it is appropriate that people get what is due to them; a few people should not occupy all the resources,” she says.