[Assam] Guwahati: Time to reclaim the city streets for ?foot people?

[Chan Mahanta]

Very appropriate article and not a moment too soon, Baruah.

While I hate to pile on Guwahati's problems,  I must say that of all 
the cities I have visited  ( not that many), Guwahati traffic's 
hostility towards pedestrians is by far the most virulent.  Last time 
I was at Guwahati, my wife, our daughter and I were attempting to 
cross the road near Guwahati Club, without success for a long time. 
There is no pedestrian crossing anywhere and vehicular traffic has 
absolutely no sympathy for pedestrians,forget about respect for their 
rights to the road. Finally I had enough and decided to brave it : 
Improvising on an octogenarian like  shuffle I dived ( literally, 
because the Guwahati foot paths ,actually death-traps, are about knee 
high to close-to-waist high in this area) right into the street, 
flailing both arms, daring traffic to run us down. It was almost a 
suicidal move, but it worked. We crossed over!

I have absolutely no respect, not even an itty-bitty tiny speck of 
it, for Guwahati PWD engineers! They are the most useless lot if 
there ever was any. It is an insult to the profession of engineering 
to call themselves engineers! I am sure they are compromised by their 
political masters, but that is no excuse to let the kind of things 
constructed as they did.

Finally, I must also say that the people of Guwahati  are such an 
apathetic lot, that they take it all lying down!









At 3:17 AM -0400 3/26/09, baruah at bard.edu wrote:
>http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090326/jsp/guwahati/story_10719959.jsp
>
>Telegraph (Guwahati) March 26, 2009
>
>Guest Column
>
>Time to reclaim the city streets for ?foot people?
>
>Sanjib Baruah
>
>Crossing the street has become a nightmare in many busy parts of 
>Guwahati today. For the old and the infirm, it is well nigh 
>impossible. Sometimes it seems as if the ?car people? are at war 
>with the ?foot people.? Even the simplest of daily chores is fraught 
>with danger.
>
>Travelling back and forth between Guwahati and New York, I am struck 
>by how cities in India and those in richer countries are on two 
>completely different tracks. Just as Guwahati ? like many other 
>Indian cities ? becomes increasingly unfriendly to pedestrians and 
>to those using non-motorised modes of transport, one sees the 
>opposite trends in many Western cities.
>
>Just the other day, New York?s mayor announced that two of the most 
>heavily congested stretches of Broadway ? one of the city?s main 
>thoroughfares ? would soon be turned into a car-free, pedestrian 
>space. Vehicles will no longer be allowed on what is probably 
>Manhattan?s busiest stretch, full of shops and theatres. The mayor?s 
>plan, as the New York Times puts it, is a move ?to change the way 
>the city thinks of its streets, making them more friendly to 
>pedestrians and cyclists and chipping away at the dominance of the 
>automobile.?
>
>For Guwahati?s pedestrians and bicyclists, the outlook does not look 
>good. According to a 2007 study by the London-based International 
>Institute for Environment and Development, Guwahati is one the 
>world?s 100 fastest-growing cities. That study relied on data from 
>the second half of the last century. Things have only accelerated 
>since then and we have seen the rapid increase in the number of 
>automobiles on the streets of Guwahati in recent years.
>
>A few years ago, flyovers and wider roads seemed like a solution. By 
>now it is clear that they can provide only temporary relief. Many 
>now hope that an underground metro system, like that in Delhi and 
>Calcutta, would some day alleviate matters. But that is unlikely.
>
>Those who think of the metro systems of New York, Paris or London as 
>models, says urban transportation expert Dinesh Mohan, do it out of 
>context. The settlement patterns of those cities are radically 
>different from Indian cities. The central business districts for 
>instance, are very large and dense; and a large number of people 
>have to come to the city centre to work. This pattern of living and 
>working is unlike that in modern Indian cities, where multiple and 
>widely scattered business centres have developed. Such settlement 
>patterns cannot support a high-capacity metro system. It is not 
>surprising, therefore, that both the Calcutta and Delhi metros are 
>carrying a much smaller percentage of passengers than originally 
>projected, making them extremely expensive in terms of public 
>subsidy.
>
>There are substantial health benefits to making streets friendlier 
>to pedestrians and non-motorised modes of transport. Among 
>industrialised countries, those that encourage high levels of 
>?active transportation? ? that is where walking, bicycling and 
>public transit account for high numbers of daily trips ? have low 
>obesity rates. When transportation systems discourage cycling and 
>walking, the population gets less healthy.
>
>There are solid environmental arguments as well for reducing our 
>reliance on motorised transportation. After all, automobiles are a 
>major contributor to greenhouse gases.
>
>How can the transportation trends in our cities be reversed? Recent 
>statements on national transportation policy reflect a desire to 
>bring about important changes. The Centre now requires that requests 
>for funds for urban transportation projects ? for flyovers, 
>road-widening or mass rapid transit system ? have to be accompanied 
>by comprehensive mobility plans. Pedestrians, non-motorised and 
>public transportation are supposed to receive priority. There is 
>also growing agreement among experts that modern bus rapid transit 
>systems with dedicated bus lanes that make full use of information 
>technology are more cost effective and sustainable than underground 
>metro systems.
>
>But historically, technocratic solutions have not been enough to 
>make cities more liveable. Champions and advocates of alternative 
>transport solutions, and activists and visionaries who care for a 
>city?s quality of life have been equally important.
>For instance, knowledgeable New Yorkers attribute a lot of the good 
>things about the city?s present quality of life, to policies and 
>practices regarding its roads and zoning laws, to urban activist and 
>thinker Jane Jacobs. I owe the phrases ?foot people? and ?car 
>people? to her. In explaining the enduring influence of her 1961 
>book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, she said three 
>decades later that her book had ?collaborated with foot people by 
>giving legitimacy to what they already knew for themselves.? Experts 
>by contrast, ?did not respect what foot people knew and valued.?
>
>Whether or not Guwahati becomes more liveable will depend to a great 
>extent on its citizens. Our technocrats, bureaucrats and politicians 
>cannot make this happen on their own, not even with the help of the 
>fanciest of foreign consulting firms that they are turning to. We 
>need urban activists and visionaries to fight for the rights of 
>pedestrians and bicyclists, to demand and promote the use of public 
>transportation, car-free zones, and a whole lot more.
>
>We must reclaim our city streets as social space, and not let them 
>become sterile spaces of mobility.
>
>Sanjib Baruah is professor at Bard College, New York and the Centre 
>for Policy Research, New Delhi.
>
>
>
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