mintwww.livemint.com10‘MONDAY, JANUARY 3, 2011, DELHI

In DetailGREEN DRIVE

City cyclists look to get on track

B Y P A L L A V I S I N G H

pallavi.s@livemint.com·······························NEW DELHI

Ranmal Singh Jhala is an angry man.At the mention of cycling, thegraphic design graduate from Na-

tional Institute of Design, Ahmedabad,and an avowed environmental activist fu-riously proclaims that he is perhaps the“only idiot” in New Delhi’s upscale De-fence Colony who still cycles to movearound town. Jhala’s indignation takesroot in the very shape the national capitalhas taken over the years: bursting trafficon its streets fuelled by sale of almost athousand private vehicles and nearly 146million traffic violations every day, anaverage of 7,000 accidents annually andrising pollution levels.

Fifty years ago when Jhala began cycl-ing to his school as a seven-year-old, hesays there were hardly any cars on theroads and women and children wouldpeddle without fear. Today, Jhala’s cycl-ing experience is marred by what he calls“criminal encroachment” of urban space.“We have all sorts of vehicles on cycletracks. People park cars there, vendors setup stalls. We are basically an uncivilizedsociety which prioritizes cars,” he says,adding, “No one, none in the government,urban planning or Parliament thinksabout the common man, people who walkand cycle, before making those policiesthat favour the motorists.”

For a large part of urban transport plan-ning in India, Jhala’s accusation maystand true, but for a quiet revolution in afew cities which are slowly waking up tocycling as a viable transport option to de-congest streets.

In Gujarat’s Surat and Rajkot, local mu-nicipal corporations have come up withroad plans to specifically create better fa-cilities for cyclists and pedestrians; Pune,Pimpri Chinchwad and Mumbai inMaharashtra are now well on way to buildmore than 300km of cycle tracks; Chennaihas already launched a pilot project toconnect local streets and schools throughcycle tracks by early next year; in Bhu-baneswar, the development authority isplanning dedicated cycling routes alongthe Bhubaneswar-Cuttack corridor. In cit-

ies such as Jaipur and New Delhi, cycletracks have come up along the Bus RapidTransit corridors, an urban transport ini-tiative drawn under the Jawaharlal NehruNational Urban Renewal Mission of theministry of urban development that over-sees infrastructure planning and develop-ment in Indian cities.

In cities where municipal corporationshaven’t taken the lead, citizen groupshave begun lobbying for dedicated cycletracks. In Bangalore, a group of cyclistshas presented a cycle track proposal forMadiwala Lake to the local body. In citiessuch as Mysore, Hyderabad and Luc-know, various cycling groups are increas-ingly negotiating with local bodies, pitch-ing cycling as an eco-friendly and healthymode of transport. “We have worked inIndia for 13 years but in the last two-threeyears, we have seen tremendous momen-tum in terms of bicycle-friendly transportplanning. In fact, Rajkot and Surat munic-ipal corporations themselves have invitedand supported us. Creating cities for pe-destrians and cyclists is also a lot aboutequity where people may not have moneyto ride private vehicles but still have sharein road space,” says Shreya Gadepalli, se-nior programme director for Institute forTransport and Development Policy(ITBP), a not-for-profit organization thatpromotes environmentally sustainabletransportation projects worldwide. ITBPis currently working on bicycle-friendlytransport projects in five cities in India.

Planning experts say the recent interestin cycling is also fuelled by the NationalUrban Transport Policy of 2007 drawn bythe ministry of urban development, whichcalls for promotion of non-motorizedtransport including cycles in India’s cities.

In Jhala’s city, New Delhi, governmentagencies for transport planning such asUnified Traffic and Transportation Infra-structure Centre have now evolved pedes-trian guidelines that are sensitive to theneeds of cyclists in the city by pushing forramps on walkways in between traffic in-tersections, among other things. “The so-lutions offered so far in government poli-cies have been restricted to road widen-ing, constructing flyovers and improvingpublic transport planning for metros. Fo-cus now is on cycle tracks, land use poli-cies that allow both commercial and resi-dential buildings to come up on one streetand integration of public transport sys-tems to ease congestion,” says Ranga-nathan, an urban planning expert whoworked with the ministry of urban devel-opment in the early 1960s and 1970s tobuild New Delhi’s earliest transport androad networks.

Much of the transport planning todayalso involves studying how people use thecities. Earlier this month, at the busy Ran-

ganathan Street in the heart of Chennai’sshopping hub T-Nagar, a group of youngmen and women went about countingpeople and the time they spent on thestreets using stop watches. Interspersedbetween malls, sidewalks and parkinglots, they followed people closely, age andgender wise, and quickly jotted downnotes.

Part of the Public Life Public Space sur-vey, the study method devised by Danisharchitect and urban design consultant JanGehl and implemented for the first time inIndia, the exercise formed initial stages ofthe Anna Nagar Pilot Project in Chennai,which will connect local streets andschools through cycle tracks. Gehl’s sur-vey looks at Chennai’s unique setting as acity by the sea, how it can encourage peo-ple to move around more on foot, cycleand transit and how public spaces can be-come more attractive and offer greater di-versity of use. “Politicians across theworld have made decisions in favour ofcars purely because none of them havethought about how people use cities. Werealized that if we could provide data onthat, it will help govern-ments make policies forpeople-friendly cities,”says Henning Thomsen,architect and cultureand communicationsmanager at Copenha-gen-based Gehl Archi-tects. His firm, whosefounder Jan Gehl is fa-mously credited withcreating the longest pe-destrian shopping areain Europe, and similar projects for theNew York City, London and Australia, hasbeen working with ITBP and the ChennaiMunicipal Corporation since August 2009for redesign of Chennai’s streets.

Luckily for India, experts point out, cit-ies offer enough scope for promotion ofcycling, though most concede that in big-ger and already planned cities, buildingcycle tracks would require a completeoverhaul of the existing infrastructure. “InIndia, the advantage is that there is still alarge population which cycles and theaverage trip length in more than 50% ofcities is less than 5km. At the averagespeed of 12-15km an hour, cycling 5kmtakes only 20 minutes,” says Gadepalli.

For bigger cities, Ranganathan says cy-cle tracks could be created along streetswhich are 18m or wider whereas onsmaller streets, traffic could be sloweddown. “In a city like Delhi, there are lots ofgreen spaces where cycle tracks couldmove through parks. Even along thedrainage channels, such tracks could bebuilt,” he says.

Some argue that city planning projects

should now stress on creation of low-den-sity cities dependent on public transport.“Paradigm shift is needed in city designnow. City size-specific planning shouldhappen now, and in bigger cities the areaswhere most of cycling happens should beidentified and made pedestrian-friendly,”says Sanjay Gupta, head of transportplanning at Delhi-based School of Plan-ning and Architecture.

Yet, despite aggressive promotion insome cities, cycling remains an unattrac-tive option for many because of conflicton streets and safety issues. A recent re-port by the International Road Federationrevealed that 1,19,860 people died due toroad accidents in 2009 in India, of whichone-third were pedestrians and cyclists.

A 2007 study by Indian Institute ofTechnology in Delhi even showed a de-cline in number of cyclists by 5-20% in allcities, citing the automobile boom in In-dia and improvement in roads. Yet, thereport underlined that more than 40%people walk to work and 15% of them stillcycle in cities such as Delhi.

For Roorkee girl Navneet Kaur Ahuja,who grew up cycling toschool and college formost part of her life, it’sthe attitude towardscycling that remains achallenge for her in hercurrent city of residence,Faridabad. “First, peoplelook at you differently.Roads don’t have cycletracks. Traffic is unrulyand motorists almost al-ways try and dominate

the streets,” she says.Henning also underlines a bigger chal-

lenge for Indian cities to tackle: social atti-tude that looks at cycling as poor man’stransport. “As in China, Indian cities alsolook at cycling as a sign of poverty. In ad-dition, in growing economies, there is as-piration in people to leave the situation ofpoverty to reach better economic condi-tion which often translates into purchaseof motorized vehicles,” he says.

A Transport Research and Injury Pre-vention Programme paper on cyclingeven indicates that 30% of cyclists in Indialived in slums and earned less than `5,000a month. The only way to work throughthis attitude is to create safe cycling envi-ronment and encourage respected peopleto use cycling as a mode of transport, saysHenning. Measures to discourage use ofcars could also help, as in cities like Lon-don which levied a higher parking fees forcars. “Marketing and branding of the ideais very important,” Henning says. “Cycl-ing benefits everyone. For urban poor, iteven creates better mobility which in turnhelps them make more money.”

City development authorities and citizengroups are working on making roadsfriendlier for cyclists in an effort topull more people towards a mode oftransport that is environment­friendly

Pedal power: Ranmal Singh Jhala, a graduate from the National Institute of Design, says his cycling experience is marred by “criminal encroachment”.

Growing impetus: Henning Thomsen of Gehl Architects.

Luckily for India,experts point out,cities offer enough

scope for promotionof cycling

PRADEEP GAUR/MINT

GV NATHAN/MINT