ITDP India

Promoting sustainable and equitable transportation worldwide

Street Vending: Need or Nuisance?

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Be it Chandni Chowk in Delhi or Pondy Bazaar in Chennai, our busiest streets are lined with rows of vibrant street shops selling everything under the sun from flowers, fruits, and vegetables to shoes, clothes, and gadgets. Street vendors are a constant presence in our cities, but are often seen as a nuisance, encroachers on public space. They suffer harassment at the hands of authorities, paying bribes under the constant threat of being evicted from their spots. We need to look at their role in our cities and find efficient and humane systems to include and integrate them rather than removing them unceremoniously from our streets.

A busy Indian Bazaar (Credit: LIFE Archive)

Historically, bazaars and street shops have defined commerce and shopping in India with their colourful displays, variety of goods and their bustling crowds.  Even today, we all remember walking and stopping by stalls and tarpaulin sheets filled with a variety of wares catching our eye. We enjoy the feeling of satisfaction when we spot bargains and end up buying three pairs of things we didn’t even know we needed at a price we didn’t think possible. Street vendors bring life to our streets, giving us a chance to stop in the middle of our busy lives and look around. They also ensure that there are “eyes on the street”, their presence making people feel safer and more comfortable being on the streets. 

Street vendors form a crucial link in the informal economies that run our cities. On the buyer’s side, they provide essential goods to people at affordable prices and convenient places. On the other side, they ensure the livelihoods of a large number of workers, who work in local small-scale industries that manufacture these goods. 

Despite their historical significance and economic contributions, street vending remained illegal in independent India for almost sixty years until 2014, when it was legalised by the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Act. Many people still regard vendors as a public nuisance and as encroachers causing traffic problems. Authorities see them as illegal groups, and often harass them to pay bribes for their spots with the constant threat of eviction. Resident associations see them as eyesores in an otherwise “modern” city. As a result, vendors face a great difficulty with obtaining licenses, unstable earnings, and a constant fear of harassment.

When street vending spontaneously starts in areas, it is not without its issues that need to be addressed. In places which are hubs of street vending activity, there is a lack of safe and sufficient pedestrian space, forcing people to walk in traffic. We need to prevent overcrowding and unsanitary conditions in public spaces. The response from city authorities have been to conduct eviction and demolition drives to erase even traces of their presence from cities. But should the solution be to completely ban a vital activity and displace people without viable alternatives? 

In 2004, the National Policy on Urban Street Vendors stated a need to recognise the role of street vendors in the economy and protect them from harassment, calling for a move from prohibition to regulation. The Act of 2014 specifies that Town Vending Committees (TVCs) must be established to carry out surveys of vendors, ensure that all existing vendors are accommodated in vending zones, and issue certificates of vending. 

City civic bodies are required to design a Vending Management Plan informed by periodic surveys, certification of vendors, and designation of special vending and no-vending zones in the city. This framework can be implemented to effectively plan areas where vending can happen and reduce the issues that result from unregulated vending. The sad reality is that while extensive city-wide plans are required in all our cities, very few cities have started designing and implementing any such plan.   

While the overall result is a city-wide plan, it has to be created as a series of local area plans. This is primarily because vendors already exist and cannot be displaced too far off from their current locations, and different streets in a region will have different capacities for vending zones. This can be assessed only at the neighbourhood level.

Bhubaneshwar was one of the first cities in India to come up with a plan working with stakeholders, vendors and the authorities. Between 2007 and 2011, the plan created 54 vending zones with 2600 permanent kiosks through a public, private and community partnership model. In February this year, Agra implemented a vending zone plan with 46 spots in the city. According to the plan, the zones will have drinking water facilities, street lights, pavements, parking space, dustbins and seating for visitors. 

However, there is a long way to go. Bhubaneshwar, for example, needed a total of 180 vending zones to accomodate all 22000 vendors in the city. Most other cities have not even started the process of engaging with street vendors.

A street food vendor’s mobile stall

We can learn from these cities and design inclusive and integrated cities. Imagine our cities with streets filled with people, walking along a variety of shops, and safe and vibrant communities in every public space. Implemented well, the policies we already have in place can ensure that street vendors find their place in our cities, making better cities for them and for all of us.

Written by Keshav Suryanarayanan

Edited by Kashmira Dubash

Rethinking decision making through collaborative community planning

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The French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre interpreted space as an entity that is not static, but one that is alive and dynamically shaped through the interaction of people with it. He stressed on the importance of the production of space through these social relations over merely treating space as an object. We, however, live in a world which largely follows the technocratic planning principles for managing these spaces, rather than  embracing the relations that form them. 

Through understanding the relationship between people and their surrounding environment inherent to every space, the cities can ensure a demand-driven approach to solution making, where decisions are largely tailor-made than mass produced to the context. This will ensure a multidisciplinary approach to solution making, where there is open knowledge sharing and a collaborative work of different stakeholders. An intervention will thus have more credibility when it is shaped through a participatory approach involving all participants who have a stake in it. 

The case of transformation along Sringeri Mutt Road

An interesting example of how the participatory deliberation of the people can shape spaces they live in was observed in the case of the tactical urbanism intervention along the Sringeri Mutt Road, facilitated  by ITDP India Programme in Chennai. The quick and cost-effective initiative that was largely community driven, was aimed at enhancing the road and personal safety of the neighborhood, primarily women and children.

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Deepening Democracy: Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance by A. Fung and O. Wright  highlights three key principles of Empowered Deliberative Democracy which seem to be strongly embraced in this case.

The first principle speaks of ‘practical orientation’ of having a specific focus on tangible problems, which helps solve it through the next two principles. With abandoned vehicles and unauthorized parking lining the stretch along the canal, the dead spaces had become a breeding hub for anti-social activities.   The tangible problems in this case were identified as the need to enhance road and personal safety for the street users in the neighborhood.

The second principle is about ‘bottom up participation’ which calls for including people directly affected by the problems, to serve as a channel for experts and citizens to work together. The direct involvement helps in increasing efficiency, trust, and accountability. The ITDP India Programme was able to measure the root cause of the concerns through initiating dialogues with the different stakeholders in the neighborhood. Those who faced the brunt were frequent users of the street, which were the local residents and the students and teachers of the neighboring school. The different layers of the problem were gradually unwrapped through site visits and discussions with these users

The third principle on ‘deliberative solution generation’ involves joint planning and problem solving through a process of deliberation. The participants hear out each other’s concerns and work together towards developing a solution through discussions than heated arguments.The fresh lease of life that the space witnessed was due to the efforts of the Chennai Traffic Police, Greater Chennai Corporation, civic action groups like Thiruveedhi Amman Koil Street Residents Association (TAKSRA) and Karam Korpom, Chennai High School (Mandaveli) and the ITDP India Programme.


Sketch by the author on the case of Sringeri Mutt Road based on the principles of Empowered Deliberative Democracy

This case showed alternate approaches to transformations that a city can witness, where deciphering the needs and solutions is a joint process with the people involved, than a top-down approach.

Moving towards a systemic change

The intervention on the ground, its success and the interest it has lit amongst the city officials to scale- up, draws parallels to stage model of social innovation discussed by Robin Murray, Geoff Mulgan and Julie Grice.

Source: Stages of Social Innovation from ‘Social Innovation Regimes An Exploratory Framework to measure Social Innovation’ Castro Spila, Javier & Luna, Álvaro & Unceta, Alfonso (2016)

The tactical urbanism solution as a prototype addressed the poor social conditions that prevailed. The smiles that it achieved in bringing to the faces of the children and other users have reflected the triumph of the approach and the city is pushing towards scaling up these quick, low cost and community driven interventions to other areas. 

Pugalis and Giddings in their work on ‘The renewed right to urban life’ extends on the Lefebvrian philosophy which values the coproduction of space. They bring up the concept and importance of ‘little victories’, small wins that add up to create strong ripples capable of bringing a systemic change.  A systemic change involves the gradual reshaping of mindsets that have been accustomed to a set machinery and distribution of power. These steps to scale up the interventions, however reflect the possibility of bringing a systemic change that values the collaborative approach to decision making, by prioritizing the needs of the most vulnerable users. The interest of the city to facilitate this decentralized approach, indirectly shapes this into a coordinated decentralized system, taking the best of both systems.

As a country that has shaped through over seventy years of democratic politics, there is an inherent need to see citizenship as something that is as dynamic as a space itself. Urbanist Luigi Maza speaks of the dual nature of citizenship, one that is not just a bundle of rights and obligations, but a dynamic social process of the citizens contributing to the production of spaces, redesigning its rules and obligations. As the city  adopts new ways of decision making, the citizens also have to start thinking outside the walls of the homes they have built and see the entire city as their home and contribute towards improving it. After all, as Jane Jacobs rightly put it, ‘Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody’.

Written by AV Venugopal

Edited by Kashmira Dubash


A year of radical planning, 2017 passes by…

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“I used to take my two-wheeler to travel the 3 kilometers between my house and the railway station. I’m now able to walk the stretch, thanks to the continuous footpath. Best part – I’ve lost 5 kilos and my diabetes!” Mr. Manimaran, a resident of Egmore in Chennai, is thrilled at the tremendous change that a safer and better footpath has brought about in his life.

The year 2017 witnessed many such impactful changes in the field of sustainable transportation all around the country, including cities which ITDP India Programme has been closely working with. Thanking all our supporters, we take a look at the year that passed by.

Pune broke ground on its ambitious Complete Streets networks – a 100km-network with its own financial resources and 45km through support from the National Smart Cities Mission. The first phase of these street design projects on JM Road and DP Road has already been lauded by the country, owing to the vibrancy of these redesigned streets. Pune’s Bicycle Plan, recently approved by the General Body, paves way for the creation of a 300km bicycle-track network in the city.

Having accomplished over 40km of Complete Streets, Chennai initiated the next phase of street design by inviting tenders in late October to redesign 22km of streets. The city tested out the design of 5 key intersections through a tactical urbanism approach – quick, temporary, on-ground interventions. Chennai also conducted another trial run of the proposed pedestrian plaza in Pondy Bazaar, the success of which fetched the project a sanction of of Rs 55 crores (~US $9 million) under the Smart Cities Mission.

Smaller cities have also made remarkable progress this year in their Complete Streets programmes – Nashik appointed nationally-acclaimed urban designers to redesign its proposed street network of 50 kilometers, with 10 kilometers tendered out; and Coimbatore commenced construction of its Model Roads and hosted an interactive exhibition to inform the people of the design of the roads while collecting feedback. Coimbatore also started developing detailed implementation plans for its Greenways and Lake Restoration Project, which includes a 30km network of greenways (exclusive walking and cycling infrastructure) that crisscross the city and connect 8 water bodies.

Becoming one of the pioneering cities in parking management in the country, Ranchi implemented a progressive on-street parking management system on its busiest thoroughfare, Mahatma Gandhi Marg, with a twelve-fold increase in revenue. Inspired by the success of the pilot, the city has proposed to refine and expand the system to cover all key locations. The state of Jharkhand has also proposed to adopt a state-level parking policy.

Chennai recently invited tenders to select an operator for its proposed on-street parking management system covering 12000 equivalent car spaces on Bus Route Roads across the city. Since Pune is also working towards parking management, ITDP, in collaboration with  GIZ-SUTP,  facilitated and managed a two-day workshop on the topic, with international parking expert, Dr Paul Barter in the city. Participants included municipal officials, traffic police, public officials from other agencies as well as various local stakeholders.

An increase in demand for better public transport has provided the fillip to cities across the country to increase and improve their transit services. Chennai made considerable advancement in its BRT planning, with the interim report for Phase I approved by the state and a series of public consultation programmes organised to explain the significance of BRT to people and get their feedback on the various corridors.

In Pune, around 130 crore rupees was sanctioned to construct 13 new bus terminals to facilitate better integration of bus services with the proposed Metro Rail network. The city also commenced work on expanding the existing 38km Rainbow BRT by an additional 15km. Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited (PMPML) initiated the process of adding 200 feeder buses to its fleet, to improve connectivity between the city and the surrounding towns.

Public bicycle sharing (PBS) is emerging as a popular mode of public transit across the country. Pune piloted a dockless PBS system with 275 bicycles and signed an MoU with 4 vendors dealing with dockless systems. Two other cities are preparing for the installation of a PBS system – Ranchi and Chennai invited operators to submit proposals for setting up 1264 bicycles in 122 stations (Phase 1) and 5000 bicycles in 378 designated parking areas, respectively.

Successful and sustained on-ground changes invariably require the backing of well-framed guidelines, policies and financial plans – 2017 was marked by many of these. Two sets of guidelines – the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) planning and design guidelines, and the Guidelines on Control and Regulation of Mixed Traffic in Urban Areas – prepared by ITDP, were approved by the apex committee of the Indian Roads Congress. These guidelines will apply for all cities across India and guide them towards low-carbon mobility.

The Government of Jharkhand adopted an inclusive TOD policy that focuses on equitable development of cities in the state, so that a majority of the population lives and works in areas with safe and accessible walking and cycling facilities integrated with reliable and high-quality public transport.

The Government of Maharashtra published a draft of the State Urban Transport Policy, which promotes low-carbon & equitable mobility and urban development by prioritising public transport (PT) and non-motorised transport (NMT). Furthermore, over half of Pune’s total transportation budget of 1100 crore rupees was allocated towards sustainable transport development for the financial year 2017-18. In the South, Coimbatore adopted a Street Design and Management Policy that focuses on creating equitable and sustainable mobility options and expanding their use.

The realisation that sustainable urban development will remain elusive without integrating women’s safety and comfort in urban transport, has generated momentum to include gender as a key factor in transport planning. Bringing this subject to the fore and as a first of its kind, a paper on Women and Transport in Indian Cities was created by ITDP and Safetipin, and released at a national workshop on gender and transit conducted by the two organisations. This paper identifies indicators, service level benchmarks and processes for integrating a gender perspective in urban transport projects, policies and programs along with good practice case studies.   

 

2017 was a year of radical planning indeed, with many grand plans conceived, developed and initiated for sustainable transportation. With all these plans set to materialize in the coming months, 2018 will be a year of implementation and tangible transformation. Looking forward to a great year ahead: Happy New Year!

#WomenOnTheMove: Women and Transport in Indian Cities

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“Ultimately, transportation is the fulcrum that allows women to participate in the workforce; a societal shift to transform the entire world economy.” – Sonal Shah, Senior Manager, ITDP India Programme 

Centred around this idea, ITDP and Safetipin have released a policy brief on Women and Transport in Indian Cities. The draft was released on 13 June 2017 at a roundtable discussion on Gender and Transit, organized by ITDP, Safetipin and UN Women with participation from 30 women’s groups, international organizations, professionals and academic institutions.[1]

A roundtable discussion on Gender and Transit was organized by ITDP, Safetipin and UN Women with participation from 30 women’s groups, international organizations, professionals and academic institutions

The coming decade will be a defining moment for India as its urban areas are estimated to constitute around 40 per cent or 600 million of its total population by 2030. According to the High Powered Executive Committee (HPEC), around INR 23 lakh crores is required over 2015–2030 for India’s urban transport infrastructure. The national government has initiated missions and schemes to invest in urban transport and infrastructure; and created indicators and service level benchmarks to establish a city’s baseline and goal for improvement. The recently announced Green Urban Mobility Scheme (GUMS) expects to invest around INR 70,000 crores over 2018–2023 on sustainable transport.

“The defining characteristic of violence against women is its normalization and ordinary and continuous nature.” – Kalpana Viswanath, Co-founder & CEO, Safetipin

While there is momentum by different levels of government in addressing women’s safety in public transport, urban transport investments are largely gender blind with a limited understanding of the interrelationships between gender and transport. Sustainable urban development will remain elusive without integrating women and girls in urban transport.

Women and girls are close to 50 per cent of our urban population. They comprise only 19 per cent of “other workers”, 84 per cent of their trips are by public, intermediate public and non-motorized modes of transport (Census 2011)[2]. While 73 per cent of trips by “other workers” in urban areas are by sustainable modes of transport, women and girls’ share is only 14 per cent. Ultimately transportation will help women access economic and social opportunities. In the next few years, cities will need to make a concerted effort to improve women and girls’ experience of sustainable modes of transport to achieve a target of 40 per cent of all trips. The policy brief fills this gap by providing a framework to integrate technical and social, quantitative and qualitative approaches for enabling this transition.

In Section 1, the brief underscores the need for a policy brief focusing on women and transport in Indian cities. Section 2 describes the scope of the brief. The gendered dimensions of urban transport are covered in Section 3, with a focus on trip chaining and purpose, modal shares, trip distances, time poverty, sexual harassment and employment in the transport sector.  Section 4 proposes urban transport indicators and service level benchmarks for comprehensive mobility plans. Recommendations to improve women’s modal shares and experiences of walking, cycling, public and intermediate public transport, and engendering public transport authorities, are highlighted in Section 5.  Since urban transport is not the responsibility of one ministry or department, gender inclusion will require interventions at multiple scales and coordination with a number of ministries and departments. Section 6 identifies such ministries and departments and their potential role in mainstreaming gender.

Women’s access and use of urban transportation will play a key role in achieving India’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) and ensure women’s right to the city and its public spaces. To quote Shreya Gadepalli, who leads the ITDP India Programme, “When we create cities – their public spaces and transport systems – that are responsive to the needs of women, children and the elderly, they become great cities for all!” 

 

Download the policy brief here.

 

  1. List of organisations that participated in the roundtable: Akshara Centre, Asian Development Bank, Azad Foundation, Breakthrough, Centre for Urban Equity (CUE), Confederate of Indian Industry (CII), Columbia Global Centre, Cornell University, CORO, Centre for Policy Research (CPR), Centre for Road Research Institute in India (CRRI), Centre for Women and Development Studies (CWDS), Delhi University, DIMTS, Hindustan Times, iTrans, Jagori, Janki Devi Memorial College (JDMC), KfW, Manas Foundation, Oak foundation, Oasis Design, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Plan India, Sushant School of Art and Architecture, Ansal University, Tata Institute for Social Sciences (TISS), Toji Communication Consultancy, TRIPP-IIT Delhi, UBER, UITP, UNDP, UNICEF, World Bank, World Resources Institute (WRI)
  2. This data is likely to under represent women and girls’ mobility as their care trips are not measured.

Pune boosts its ‘Sustrans’ Initiatives: Hosts Smart City Anniversary Celebrations

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One of India’s fastest growing business and IT hubs, Pune has been constantly planning and executing sustainable initiatives even before India envisaged the Smart City Mission. For many Indian cities, the national initiative is its first step towards sustainability. However, for Pune, the mission acted as a catalyst. It significantly boosted confidence of the city administration, who not only fast tracked implementation of existing projects, but also expanded their scope and added many new projects to the city’s kitty. The city is making rapid progress in expanding its bus rapid transit (BRT) network, strengthening its public transportation system and implementing projects to make its streets pedestrian and cyclist friendly.

On account of its successes, late June 2016, Pune was selected as the destination for the first anniversary celebrations of India’s smart city mission. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who graced the occasion, launched 84 projects across 20 smart cities. Of these projects, 14 were from Pune. The new projects will give the city the required thrust to make IT based improvements in its public transport system.

Pune’s high quality mass transit system—Rainbow BRT, launched in September 2015—is witnessing constant expansion. The city is exploring ways to converge different funding sources and further strengthen the system. While a new 8 km corridor is planned under Smart City’s area based development in Aundh-Baner-Balewadi region (ABB), the city’s progressive 2016-17 budget has allocated funding for two more corridors, which will expand the Rainbow network by 15 km. In addition, the “pilot” BRT corridors will be redesigned with “Rainbow” style median stations to provide level boarding.

A Rainbow BRT bus enters a station equipped with safe access ramps that allows everybody, especially the elderly and the differently able, to use the system.

Similarly, the city bus service is also undergoing a massive transformation. The city is investing heavily on expanding its fleet size—by almost doubling the operational fleet. Pune’s existing bus fleet of  about 2,055 buses will be augmented with an addition of 1550 buses by 2017—to achieve 25% of total trips by public transport. As part of the Smart City Mission, Pune will improve bus services through ITMS and real-time tracking of all its buses. A central control centre will monitor driving quality of buses and services at all levels. The city has also embarked on developing websites, mobile apps,  and passenger information systems to give commuters critical information on expected time of arrival of buses and schedules. A common mobility card—‘Mobility Integration (MI)’—has been launched to enable cash-free payments on public transport systems.

The city is also looking towards improving conditions for its pedestrians and cyclists. Most arterial roads in the city will be redesigned as ‘Complete Streets’—including 45 km of streets in the ABB region under the smart city proposal and 100 km of streets across the city through PMC budget. To re-establish its cycling culture, Pune is developing a cycle plan for the city, with an objective of increasing the cycling modal share from today’s 9% to 25% by 2031. A bicycle sharing system is also proposed in the ABB region. To ensure that quality remains consistent during the planning, designing and implementation of its non-motorised transport initiatives, the city is setting up a street design cell, as well as adopting a pedestrian policy and urban street design guidelines.

Pune’s commitment to improving mobility is placing the city as a leader in India, on sustainable transport and development. By embracing the direction set by the national mission and expanding its scope across the city using both national and city funding, Pune is setting a benchmark for all other cities in the Indian urban panorama.

Cover picture source: www.punesmartcity.in

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‘Smart City’ gives wings to Ranchi’s urban dreams

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Ranchi, capital of Jharkand- one of India’s youngest states, is taking incredible strides to transform itself into a livable, healthy, and sustainable city  in a very short span of time. With focus on improving the quality of life for its citizens, Ranchi is embracing people-centric planning practices including strengthening public transport services, implementing a progressive parking management system and adopting transit-oriented development principles for urban planning. These efforts were reflected in the city’s Smart City Proposal (SCP), which was selected in the fast-tracked second round of India’s Smart City Mission in May 2016.

Originally, Ranchi was not among the first twenty cities to be selected under the Smart City Mission. The proposal, which selected a greenfield development with focus mainly on drinking water, sanitation, sewage and solid waste management, failed to address the challenges of urban mobility posed by Ranchi’s rapidly growing urban population.

Until recently, the city’s transport problems were on the back burner. Although half of all the trips in the city are made on foot or cycle, footpaths and cycling lanes are almost non-existent. In the absence of a formal bus service, high polluting and unsafe informal paratransit caters to two thirds of all the motorised trips. Further, the limited financial capacity of the Ranchi Municipal Corporation (RMC) has been a major hindrance in changing the status quo.

However, in mid 2015, the city began to take its first steps towards a sustainable transport transformation. RMC assumed responsibility of overseeing city bus operations and is working towards expanding and improving the service. The city has also initiated the process to adopt a progressive parking policy to tackle traffic congestion. To test the policy, the city is working towards implementing priced parking on a heavy traffic commercial zone. The parking prices, which are pegged to parking demand, are approximately four times higher than the current rates. Building on these initial steps, Ranchi’s revised SCP, improved with technical inputs from ITDP, embraced multiple sustainable transport initiatives.

Ranchi-July16-existing

Ranchi-July16-proposed

Caption:The rendering (above) shows the proposed design of a major intersection, Albert Ekka Chowk (existing photo), on the Main road in Ranchi—with all elements of a complete street.

Over the next five years, Ranchi aims to increase its modal share of public transport to 50% by expanding its bus fleet by more than five times—from existing 65 buses to almost 375 buses. An intelligent traffic management system will help improve efficiency and service of its bus fleet. Further, to provide comfortable access to its public transport and encourage walking and cycling in the city, Ranchi aims to redesign 31.5 km of its streets as ‘Complete Streets’ with wide, safe and continuous footpaths, safe crossing facilities, clearly demarcated parking bays, and uniform carriageways.

The greenfield area based development is proposed to adopt a transit-oriented development (TOD) approach with dense, mixed-use neighbourhoods planned along frequent, fast, and reliable high capacity mass transport lines. The smart city proposal reinforces the city’s intention to curb private vehicle use by managing parking through market-based pricing.

With definite funding from the national and state governments towards these tangible improvements planned in the city, Ranchi is en route to transforming itself into a sustainable and equitable city. ITDP is a proud partner to the city in its mission to embrace this bright future.

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Interview with Geetam Tiwari: Mobility and Climate Solutions in Indian Cities

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Geetam is the TRIPP Chair Associate Professor for Transport Planning at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Delhi and Alderbrastka Guest Professor for Sustainable Urban Transport at the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden 2007-2009.   She developed systems and designs that make transportation safer and more efficient, with a special focus on vulnerable road users and commuters.  This is her interview with Meeting of the Minds, a global knowledge sharing platform.

Can you tell me a little bit about the work you are you doing?

We were one of the first recipients of VREF’s Centre of Excellence grant and have had their renewed support since 2002. The broad framework for our Transport Planning group here at the Indian Institute of Technology (ITT) is to work on research that reduces adverse health effects of transport with a special reference to low-income countries. The original focus of work was on transportation planning and traffic safety, as well as vehicle safety.

We have had many projects and PhD students supported over the years. Colleagues from mechanical engineering and applied mechanics work on crash modeling. Guidelines and policy documents have been produced for both the state and central governments in India. Many useful concepts have come out of our Transport Planning Group at ITT, such as high capacity bus systems like Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) that were first introduced to cities in India. In fact, the Delhi government came up with new bus systems and specifications for urban buses through VREF support. Although a lot of our research is funded by city and state government, implementation of our work depends on who is in government, who is in power, and how effective they are.

The Industry-Academic Partnership is a project we are working on closely with a company in Delhi that looks after bus systems. The idea is that they share data with us, we do a lot of research to come up with ideas of how to improve bus performance, and they use them to improve the performance of the bus system.

More recent funding supports work in two other areas. One is pedestrian safety, which includes planning better roads for pedestrians, planning safer vehicles for pedestrians, and getting into what legislative changes are required to create a pedestrian safe environment. The other topic is a new one that has emerged: urban freight.

What is the connection between urban freight and safety or health?

More and more we realized that very little is known about urban freight. The only related policies are very restrictive– we don’t allow freight vehicles to enter the city at certain hours and don’t allow them to use certain roads. When we started looking at larger health issues, including global warming and climate change, we knew we couldn’t exclude such an important aspect of transport.

Have you come across any interventions to mitigate the negative effects of urban freight?Urban freight has implications for greenhouse gas emissions based on how clean it is; what kind of fuel is being used and whether is it motorized or non motorized. The other aspect is that almost 60% of pedestrians involved in fatal crashes in cities are actually hit by freight vehicles. So we are starting to explore this in more detail by looking at Indian city data. It is quite alarming that involvement of freight vehicles in hitting pedestrians is so high, even though we don’t allow freight vehicles in the city during day hours. So the involvement of freight in looking at environmental solutions (both local and global) and also the health aspects of traffic crashes has to be understood better.

There are straightforward policies for the environmental aspects: clean up the fuel for freight vehicles. A more interesting aspect is finding counter-intuitive information. For example, generally, the main freight centers have been created outside the city. The main logic is that bigger vehicles don’t enter the city so as not to congest city roads, with the final freight distribution happening some other way. However, now some research is showing that this might not be a good strategy. Instead of one big vehicle coming into the city, there are several smaller vehicles used for final delivery, and that part is not being optimized. Our basic transport system has traditionally been optimized for passenger traffic but it’s very clear that you need freight wherever people live. We have not accounted for that in our planning and modeling and it cannot be ignored any longer.

One of my colleagues has an operations research background and is working closely with researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Center for Sustainable Urban Freight Systems in the US. They are studying how final freight delivery is taking place and if there is any way of optimizing it. One of my PhD students is working with the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden to look into what kind of policies can reduce the main externalities created by freight, which include: safety, climate change issues, and local pollution and congestion. We will eventually look into what strategies would work to reduce these. 

Have any of your research findings surprised you?

We were recently studying detailed traffic crash data from six cities for the last five years. The presence of two-wheelers, such as motorcycles and other motorized two-wheeled transport with small engines, is very high in most Asian countries. We were surprised to find that at least 15-20% of the fatal crashes in cities are caused by two-wheelers hitting pedestrians.

One of the best measures of controlling crashes is speed control by design. However, traffic-calming devices are designed more for cars and right now there are not many designs available that can effectively control speeds of motorized two-wheelers. When you create exclusive lanes for pedestrians and bicycles, it is very easy for two-wheelers to also use those lanes. So this is going to throw up a lot of new challenges for us in terms of making urban environments safe for pedestrians in the presence of many motorized two-wheelers.

What about active transportation, like walking or biking?

You can’t promote public transport without promoting pedestrians. We have done important guidelines for government that also discuss modal shares. The Code of Practice for Urban Roads explains how to make roads safer for pedestrians, bicycles, and public transport users. Another is a very detailed audit checklist city governments can use to make public transport accessible by all by following universal design guidelines. We also created the excel-based Bus Evaluation and Design Tool, as well as different versions of a bicycle master plan for Delhi.

We see active transport as a part of this whole story. You cannot promote active transport if you cannot ensure safety. We have to create safe environments – only then will people walk and bicycle by choice.

What innovations or major changes to do you see coming in the next five years?

A lot of people are already working on hybrid buses, cleaner buses, and electric buses with very different technology. This is where we are looking for major breakthroughs that make a clean and less expensive bus. However, we also need innovation in institutions that can deliver clean and safe mobility to large numbers of people in our cities. Whether it’s a partnership between government and private sector, or civil society organization and citizens, we need to come up with some new breakthroughs in how we organize our systems. Better integration to benefit the commuter.

Another important issue is urbanization now taking place in Asia, and next in Africa. The rest of the world is already 80-90% urbanized but in these two continents, urbanization does have a different shade because population densities are very high and all cities have “informal settlements”. These are usually viewed as something undesirable and not a legal part of master planning or urban planning. Because of that, large numbers of people end up living in very poor conditions. So we will have to understand how to deal with informal settlements, how to integrate them into the formal processes to improve the living conditions of their residents.

In fact, the formal sector has not been very good at providing jobs, livelihoods, and decent living conditions to these people. This is the set of people for whom even subsidized public transport is not affordable. Access to employment, health, and education – not just housing – is extremely important. Can we ensure access by offering public transport, or can we do it by locating facilities so they can be reached by active transport which doesn’t require any money? Do we have policies and methods to ensure efficient and safe mobility for this set of people? Dealing with the link is between livelihoods, urban planning, and mobility in urban informal settlements is a major research and policy challenge.

Something that strikes me is that the 21st century is different from the last century when motorization began. Climate change and global warming issues were not understood then so the whole aspect of transport now has to be understood differently. We hope there is a paradigm shift in understanding how to provide efficient and democratic mobility to the majority of the population. It cannot be dependent on the individual car. The powerful industry behind traditional mobility will pose a lot of challenges in doing something very different. If something drastic is not done by 2050, many studies show that global temperature is going to rise by up to four degrees. This will pose a major challenge. If we are living in that kind of world, then how should we organize our cities and mobility differently to adapt to this new reality?

This interview is the part of a partnership series between ITDP, Meeting of the Minds, and Volvo Research and Education Foundations (VREF).  In this series, we will feature interviews with researchers from VREF’s Future Urban Transport program. The original interview conducted by Meeting of the Minds can be found here.

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