The late transport and road safety expert at IIT Delhi, Dinesh Mohan, observed that in India, pedestrians and cyclists tend to be from the less affluent sections of society, while car drivers are from the other end of the income spectrum. This is reflected in the social status of victims of road accidents.

Government policies reinforce this division in India by disproportionately investing in facilities for cars and two-wheelers, while neglecting or even raising the opportunity cost for pedestrians by removing footpaths or rendering them unusable. Tamil Nadu is a relatively advanced state in India, but its policies towards motorisation are heavily focused on private vehicle ownership and flow, with lip-service rendered to pedestrian causes. Being a hub of automobile manufacturing, the government’s policies seem to favour vehicle-borne mobility over everything else.

There is considerable anecdotal evidence to support this thesis. Take the Rajiv Gandhi IT Expressway that leads from the Raj Bhavan – IIT area towards Siruseri, a prosperous stretch that is seen as a kind of Silicon Valley of Chennai where the big IT companies like Infosys and TCS are located. This 45 km road that begins at Madhya Kailash goes through Sholinganallur to Siruseri. Unlike other roads, this highway began in the 1990s on a corporatised model to it, as a special purpose subsidiary of the TN Road Development Company Ltd. It thus acquires its glamour from fast-moving cars, not walkability.

I had to walk the other day from zero point on this Expressway, which is Madhya Kailash, for about 1.5 km to reach the Roja Muthiah Research Library in Taramani to attend the Prof. M. Anandakrishnan endowment lecture on “Rethinking Indian Cities: Coping with Urban Sprawl, Water Scarcity, Degraded Rivers, Urban Flooding and other Challenges in the Age of Climate Change” by K. Ashok Vardhan Shetty, an academic-minded and fiercely independent IAS officer who has served in the Tamil Nadu government in the senior-most positions, including the Chief Minister’s Office and the Municipal Administration department. He was also the Vice-Chancellor of the Indian Maritime University.

I am writing this post as much to describe the traumatic walk to reach the venue to hear a talk on reformed urbanisation, as pointing to the many informative points Mr. Shetty made in his presentation.

The IT Expressway is now partly choked at its entrance close to CLRI due to Chennai Metro work, creating a narrow traffic funnel that has no walking path – you simply must be able enough to dodge vehicles and get to the road from Sardar Patel Road end. The walk then turns into a video game of sorts, where you try to find the walkable edge of the road, and make a forlorn trudge amidst roaring traffic until you cross the VHS hospital and the Government Polytechnic.

It becomes evident that few people walk here, because the footpath is unfinished and there are big mounds of debris along the margin. But a rude surprise for the walker lies just ahead.

Suddenly, the road margin disappears, since it has been transferred to car owners who were gifted a long U-turn flyover, a 1-km elevated U turn facility that does nothing else. The pedestrian abruptly finds himself sandwiched between this monstrous U turn bridge on the right, and the speeding vehicles that are coming at her. A further shock awaits the walker.

At the start of the ramp leading up to the U-turn bridge, there is zero possibility of crossing the road without risk, as these pictures show:

The U-turn bridge is at right, and the pedestrian is left to face the oncoming vehicles.
At the start of the ramp to the U-turn bridge, pedestrians have wait at this fork, to try and get to the side at their own risk. Vehicles here have seemed to be travelling at a minimum of 50 kmph, going up to 80 or 100 kmph.
From the entry-exit to the Roja Muthiah Research Library, at left, this is the scene. The U-turn ramp is at left, the IT Expressway beside it. Notice that there is no footpath next to the ramp. Who designed this monstrosity and who approved it? The MRTS line is at extreme right.
The Indira Nagar MRTS station is at right, and the U-turn bridge is seen in the background. The crude footpath at left abruptly ends at the entrance to Roja Muthiah Research Library which is among a clutch of institutions in the Taramani area. An elevated road crossing towards the south involves a further 300 m walk and a steep climb to reach the station, but it does not help those who are walking south from Madhya Kailash.

Now for some insights from what Mr. Shetty said, which, in a strange way, highlighted the dysfunctionality of Indian urban planning right outside the venue. It is important to note that the audience at the talk included many senior bureaucrats of the Tamil Nadu government, including a recently-retired former Chief Secretary.

At the policy level, Mr. Shetty’s stress was on creating well-planned satellite cities near the existing megacities such as Chennai, to avert urban collapse. Grow vertical, accommodate far many more people per square km than we do now. Stop urban sprawl. (Of course, this is a big-ticket political decision with implications for who would capture the land value increase from public investment in roads, walkways, cycling paths, gardens, mass mobility infrastructure and high quality civic amenities.) Singapore, one of the cited examples for green and nature-affiliated building design, has tight government control on land use and building.

But there were other basic tenets – the low-hanging fruit: “It is not enough to know, it is necessary to do,” is one.

Conscious greening of cities through avenue trees, pocket parks and constructed wetlands to moderate the urban climate are others. It is rare to hear a bureaucrat talk about biophilic cities, and it is anyone’s guess whether the IAS fraternity in the audience were in sync. If they are, we should see results. Also see this: The Nature of Cities.

Transport and mobility add considerably to greenhouse gas emissions, and Mr. Shetty cited a figure of 25% share of overall CO2 released. He also called for more modern bus-based mobility and greater investment in cities as a share of overall infrastructure investment, solar power, more water harvesting and healthy rivers lined with native trees.

The endowment lecture also pointed to the absence of strong public engagement in the urban planning discussion at the city level. To this, one might add that there is also not much empowerment of Mayors. Charismatic, empowered Mayors change the way cities work. Think Enrique Penalosa (mentioned in the lecture) and Anne Hidalgo.

In the end, what can transform Indian cities? We have laws and policies but no enforcement. Non-motorised Transport Policy of Greater Chennai Corporation, National Urban Transport Policy, now 16 years old, rejuvenation budgets for civic infrastructure like JNNURM now AMRUT, Smart Cities and so on. Mr. Shetty had a sharp point about the virtual absence of horticulturists in Chennai, compared to the vast number of engineers on the GCC payroll.

The reality is that tax funds are paying for costly infrastructure investments that are hostile to people and friendly only to cars with a lock-in effect running into decades. Perhaps satellite cities can help us, if they are equitable, accessible and affordable.

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