On 27th July 2023, the ITDP India team was delighted to organise a visit to the Pondy Bazaar Pedestrian Plaza for Ms. Steffi Lemke, Minister of the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety of Germany, along with a delegation from the Ministry.
The ITDP India team presented our work on promoting sustainable mobility in India, with specific focus on the journey of the street transformation work across the country, starting in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and the subsequent scale-up to 100+ cities through three national programmes with the Smart Cities Mission, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs—Cycles4Change, Streets4People, and Transport4All.
Since 2015, with support from the International Climate Initiative (IKI) under the India Sustainable Mobility Initiative project, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) has been supporting the Greater Chennai Corporation and the Chennai Smart City Limited to work on transforming the city’s streets into safe and comfortable spaces for pedestrians and cyclists and improving its public transport system.
Over the years, Chennai has been a pioneer with multiple ambitious steps towards this vision—adopting the country’s first Non-Motorised Transport Policy prioritising walking and cycling; creating an award-winning Streets for People Initiative redesigning more than 100 km of streets; creating the city’s first pedestrian plaza in Pondy Bazaar, a historic shopping area in the heart of the city; launching a visionary Mega Streets programme to scale up work to over 250 km of streets in six neighbourhoods across the city; operationalising the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA) to consolidate and coordinate all transport projects being implemented in the city; and setting up the country’s first Gender and Policy Lab, to mainstream gender-inclusive transport planning.
Following the presentation, the Minister and delegation walked with the ITDP India team through the Pondy Bazaar Pedestrian Plaza to experience the project first-hand. Through the visit, the ITDP India team highlighted key successes of the project—the wide and accessible walkways, trees and green areas, comfortable seating, designated parking areas and well-managed on-street parking, children’s play areas, and integrated utilities—making it a unique space in the city, and a role model for other cities.
We look forward to working with cities across the country to transform their streets into Healthy Streets—safe and comfortable for walking and cycling—and improve their public transport systems to move together towards a sustainable and inclusive future.
