Kashi Vishwanath corridor in Banaras is an example of this desire. Indian cities like Banaras and Shahjehanabad (Old Delhi) were designed for pedestrians but businessmen, politicians and people, seem to want to convert them into cities for cars. Remember the day when Mumbai was reclaimed by the sea in 2005, those who did not get out of their flooded cars to walk on the flooded street, died. During the rainy months, walking (and driving for that matter) in Mumbai is a challenge. Narrow roads and high buildings create shaded walkways. The density of walkers is such that the police need to protect cars from pedestrians crossing the street. Few streets have wide footpaths, but the continuous row of small shops along streets made them very walkable, now disrupted by big stores and malls without street frontage. People take the suburban trains to travel long distances and walk from the train station to their destination. One of the most walkable cities in India is Mumbai. Walking is a pleasure in such places and a car is a big liability. So, what if these traffic calming measures calm pedestrian traffic also. I think of many such roads as woonerfs without their being called that. Each of them designed to slow down motorised traffic, sometimes making it impossible for cars to access the walkable parts of the city. The Indian method of improving walkability is by introducing a range of traffic calming measures –pot holes on the road, ruminating cows shop extensions, goods display, food stalls and vendors’ carts on the road weekly bazaars and repair shops car and motor cycle parking on the road, pedestrians walking on the road and criss-crossing it anywhere two wheelers going in the wrong direction hand carts pulling oversize loads, acrobats and pirated-book sellers at traffic lights and so on. The situation may be different now because of Covid, but our roads are choked with cars and so it looks like 85% people travel to work by car and hardly anyone walks to work. Looking at the statistics for Delhi, a few years back somebody said that only 15% of people travel to work by car. In the same strain, we do not recognise domestic workers as workers. We fail to perceive these, perhaps because we don’t see the walkable parts of our cities as parts of our city, we fail to recognise walking and cycling trips as trips related to work, and we don’t recognise the cyclists and walkers as residents of our city. We Indians have developed our own ways of discouraging cars and encouraging walking, very different from the European ways. Having grown up in an eminently walkable city of Old Delhi, I find that often we fail to recognise the walkable aspects of Indian cities. I walk 5 kms every day and since I don’t drive to work, my average daily driving distance is less than my daily walk.Ī lot of ideas about walkable cities and 15-minute cities, generated in places like the Netherlands and also some in the USA have come to India. Before I write anything, let me say that I live in New Delhi and I am a walker.
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