Scandinavian magazine lauds ‘designing streets for walking and biking’
Chennai Corporation's street policy goes global
Chennai: Chennai Corporation (CC)’s efforts to make the city roads pedestrian-friendly has won international recognition. The civic body’s street design project or rather non-motorised transport policy has been selected as one of the 100 leading sustainability solutions in the globe.
“Sustainia”, a Scandinavian think tank that facilitates provision of sustainable urban development solutions in communities around the world. It has short-listed the city’s street policy under the category “designing streets for walking and biking.”
Sustainia 100 is a magazine published by Sustainia, showcasing the best sustainable urban development projects of the world. It has appreciated the city for adopting “a policy to prioritise walking and cycling and discourage the use of motorised vehicles, transforming the city’s approach to transportation.”
Chennai features on page 68 of the magazine, which also takes note of the abysmal record of the city in terms of road accidents (Chennai has highest number of road deaths with over 10,000 traffic crashes reported every year).
Launched in 2012, the Chennai street design project aims to reclaim the city’s streets for pedestrians and cyclists by prioritising modes of transport other than private automobiles. Over 1,500 projects received from 74 countries were reviewed to shortlist the top 100 of Sustainia 2015, which was launched in Paris last week. A 25-member advisory board, comprising 18 global research organisations, assessed the projects on five evaluation criteria.
Sustainia has also acknowledged the proposal of CC to have safe and continuous footpaths on at least 80% of all streets and increase the share of walking and cycling trips to over 40% by 2018. Justifying the need for a sustainable policy to promote cycling and walking, the magazine also says; Despite the lack of safe infrastructure for non-motorised transport, a third of all trips in the city are made on foot and bicycle.
Hence, the design will ensure that these trips become safer, healthier and more enjoyable through a redesigned urban transport network. An assessment of the economic impact of the policy, as is contained in the magazine, says the initiative will limit the cost of road crashes in India, which the government estimates to be about 3% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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