The harried pedestrian fights back

While Mumbai is undergoing an image makeover, a large segment of the population continues to be treated as second-class citizens. But pedestrians are not going to take it stoically any more. That is why they have started questioning who has the right of first use over the city’s roads? Sandeep Ashar reports

Even as newly widened roads and modern flyovers take shape, underlining Mumbai’s transformation into a world-class city with world-class infrastructure, the authorities are yet to address a simmering issue.

Who enjoys the right of first use of roads in the city?

Is it the city’s pedestrian population, which accounts for 85 per cent of the ‘by-road’ commuters, or is it the two-, three-, and four-wheel vehicles that cart less than 15 per cent of commuters? It is a question that the authorities are only just starting to grapple with.

Findings compiled from various sources show that vehicular traffic in the city has grown by more than 35 per cent in the past four years. According to Vijay Mahajan’s, Mumbai Fact Book published by Bombay First, a corporate initiative to improve governance in the city, there were 10.37 lakh vehicles in 2003. Since then, the city has added another 3.62 lakh vehicles, according to the BMC’s statistics.

The rapid rise, believe pedestrian activists, is worrying, especially because road infrastructure has failed to keep pace. Journalist Krishnaraj Rao, who co-founded Sahasi Padyatri, or Brave Pedestrians, a group that has taken up the cause of pedestrians in the city, says, “The road space on the sides, including pavements and footpaths, has already been lost to hawkers and haphazardly parked vehicles. The pedestrian is already sharing space with vehicles. If the government does not regulate the influx of private vehicles, then even that space will be lost.”

Rao’s fear is not unfounded. Already, walking on the city’s streets has become an adventure of sorts. At many places, there are no proper pavements. Where pavements do exist, they are often encroached upon by vendors.

This is particularly so outside railway and bus stations, areas where you would expect to have the maximum pedestrian movement.

When pedestrians leave the pavements and get down on the roads, they have to contend with vehicles parked wherever possible and traffic that grows denser by the day. The official parking space in the city can accommodate only 8,000 or so vehicles, while the city, at last count, is home to some 14 lakh vehicles.

Surprisingly, government town planners had accounted for this threat and listed ‘regulation of private vehicles’ as an integral part of the transportation strategy in their Vision 2015 document, but the move remains a ‘vision’ on paper.

The failure to act is affecting vehicles as well. Narinder Nayar of Bombay First recently pointed out that average vehicular speed had come down from 30kph in 1962 to 14kph in 2007.

Seeing that the situation is rapidly getting out of hand, pedestrian activists, at a meeting at the Bandra Bandstand on Saturday, demanded a ‘pedestrian-centric’ approach from the authorities.

With conservative projections pegging the rise in number of vehicles to 16 lakh by 2011, concerns were raised about the impact of the influx of the Tata Nano and other small cars.

The MMRDA has drawn up a plan to build skywalks near 50 railway stations in the city, but that may address only part of the problem. That is why Rao called for a halt to the registration of new private vehicles till road infrastructure is upgraded and pedestrian concerns are addressed.
 a_sandeep@dnaindia.net