For A Safe and Sustainable Chennai Pedestrian Safety is the Key
1. SAFETY
68 TrafficInfraTech • October - November ’12 • www.trafficinfratech.com
DespitevariousmeasuresbeingadoptedbytheTamilNadugovernmentinChennai,theroadfatality
ratehasn’treducedmuch.RoshanToshniwal,ConsultantwithTransparentChennai,CDF(Centrefor
DevelopmentFinance),IFMRtakesadetailedlookintotherealproblemsplaguingroadsafetyandadvocates
safepedestrianinfrastructurestrongly.
E
very year, since 2009, over 1.2 lakh
people perish in road accidents in
India, and a high percentage of peo-
ple killed are vulnerable road users such
as pedestrians and cyclists. In 2010 Tamil
Nadu alone had accounted for 11.5% of the
people killed in road accidents in the coun-
try of which the two wheelers, bicycles and
pedestrians together formed 34%. Chennai
and its suburbs alone accounted for 9% of
all road accident fatalities in the state. By col-
lating the accident data of suburbs and the
city, it has been found that the total num-
ber of accidents has marginally decreased
from 8234 in 2010 to 8198 in 2011 but
the number of fatalities has increased from
1415 victims to 1504 victims in the respec-
tive years.
For a safe and sustainable Chennai
Pedestrian Safety is the key
2. SAFETY
www.trafficinfratech.com • October - November ’12 • TrafficInfraTech 69
The turbulent trend of the affected par-
ties in the city due to road accidents – from
2006 to 2010 -- shows pedestrians and
cyclists together constitute 33% and people
driving two wheelers alone form 30% of the
people affected in road accidents. Thus, the
travellers on two wheelers, pedestrians and
cyclists form the most vulnerable group of
road users in the city.
Between 2006 and 2010, twenty three
arterial roads had accounted for 47% of all
the road accidents in the city. And alarm-
ingly, three roads, namely Anna Salai, EVR
Periyar Salai and Inner Ring Road together
were involved in 18% of all road accidents.
Again, about 29% of the people affected
by the road accidents on these three roads
were pedestrians and in about 39% of the
cases, two-wheelers were involved. Since
these three roads are maintained by the
state highways department and a large part
of the Chennai Metro Rail (CMRL) plies on
this route, the concerned authorities need
to be more cautious while designing accessi-
bility to the stations and facilitate transition
from one mode of travel to the other for the
safety of the targeted users.
Last year about 38% (551) of the peo-
ple killed by road accidents in the Greater
Chennai were pedestrians and about half
of them were above the age of 50. The
two wheelers have been a major cause of
the fatalities, killing 25% of these victims,
while trucks mowed down 270 and the
metropolitan transport corporation (MTC)
buses fatally knocked out 122 people.
To combat this menace of increasing
road accidents, the Tamil Nadu govern-
ment created a road safety policy in 2007
which it implemented with an action plan
in 2009. The long term vision of the policy
is to reduce the number of road accidents,
injuries and deaths by remedial measures
in the areas of engineering, enforcement,
education and emergency care with a goal
of 20% reduction of fatalities and injuries by
2013, considering 2006 as the base year. To
implement this effectively, the government
formulated a road safety committee in each
district.
In Chennai, this committee carries out a
complex job of coordination between more
than 15 government agencies and civil soci-
ety organisations, looking into the various
aspects right from road construction and
maintenance to enforcement of traffic laws
and traffic management. As part of the
action plan, the government, supported
by the World Bank and some interna-
tional consultants, adopted a Geographical
Information System (GIS) based software
called Road Accident Data Management
System (RADMS) which allows the State
Traffic Planning Cell to map the locations
of all recorded road accidents on highways,
district roads and urban roads. The RADMS
software is being used in 1400 police sta-
tions across the state and has helped to
identify 3000 accident-prone spots. The
As part of the action plan
the government, supported
by the World Bank and some
international consultants,
adopted a Geographical
Information System (GIS)
based software called Road
Accident Data Management
System (RADMS). It allows the
State Traffic Planning Cell
to map the locations of all
recorded road accidents on
highways, district roads and
urban roads.
3. 70
SAFETY
TrafficInfraTech • October - November ’12 • www.trafficinfratech.com
Transport department has implemented
road safety measures that were based
on this analytical data and claims to have
brought down the number of fatalities from
13.39 per 10,000 vehicles in 2006 to 10.09
in 2010. Also, the Chennai city traffic police
maintains 425 zebra crossings, 185 speed
breakers (though bumpy) and 327 mid-block
crossings in the city to ease at-grade cross-
ing for pedestrians. Apart from this, several
neighbourhoods also build and maintain
traffic calmers in their neighbourhood.
But during this period, the state also
witnessed a 40% increase in the number
of registered vehicles which means that
the number of fatalities has not actually
reduced.
Another important point is that pedestri-
ans constitute a large percentage of trips
made in Chennai. According to the second
master plan of the city, the estimated num-
ber of trips per day is around 13.3 million in
Chennai Metropolitan Area (CMA) of which
almost 33% are made by walk, 19% by two
wheelers and 26% by public transport. But
the city municipal corporation maintains
footpaths only on 830kms of roads out of
a total length of 2500kms of roads in the
city. As per the Indian Road Congress (IRC),
the minimum width for a footpath should
be 1.5 metres – unobstructed, but the city
has more than 52% of the footpath mea-
suring less than 1.5 metres and are riddled
with several obstacles like utility boxes, lamp
posts, trees, and parked vehicles. There are
only about 25kms of pavements in the city
that partially comply with the IRC standards.
Besides this, there are only 25 subways and
32 foot over bridges (FOBs) in the city for
pedestrians to cross the roads. However,
most of these bridges and subways do not
facilitate the disabled, the elderly, children
and women who find it difficult to use these
bridges. The FOBs are also inconvenient to
access since they are located far away from
the bus stops, railway stations and other
such high pedestrian traffic areas where they
would have made a difference. Similarly, the
Chennai traffic police maintains 218 traffic
signals of which only 39 facilitate pedestrian
movement. Moreover, even these 39 cross-
ings do not have long enough wait times for
a disabled person to cross.
One of the main problems is that the city
is clogged with a rising vehicle population
which has increased by almost three fold in
the past ten years while there has been a
meagre increase in motorable roads. This
has led to increased traffic congestion and
reduction of driving speed in the city. To
reduce congestion and increase the traffic
speed, the authorities have introduced vari-
ous traffic engineering techniques like road
widening, flyovers and one-way streets. But
they have neglected and marginalised the
pedestrian infrastructure forcing the pedes-
trians to walk on the roads, compromising
their safety, and slowing down the traffic
further. There are over 150 one-way streets
in the city which have no or minimal refuge
and grade separated crossings for pedestri-
ans. It is a big hurdle for the pedestrians
to cross these roads considering the heavy
vehicular traffic. Northern Chennai has
almost 60% of the one-way roads in the city
as it is very densely populated with narrow
roads which have to cater to heavy vehicle
population from the port. Most of the roads
on which metro rail construction is taking
place have become one way streets with no
pedestrian infrastructure causing the pedes-
trians to run amok and scurry for security.
Though the need for building more pedes-
trian facilities is evident, the Corporation
of Chennai has spent only `45 lakh in the
As per the Indian Road
Congress (IRC), the minimum
width for a footpath
should be 1.5 metres —
unobstructed, but 52% of
the city’s footpaths measure
less than 1.5 metres and are
riddled with several obstacles
like utility boxes, lamp posts,
trees and parked vehicles
Table 1: Money allocated to Road Safety Fund
(Rupees in Crores)
Year Tamil Nadu Chennai
2006-07 6 0.53
2007-08 6 0.97
2008-09 16.8 0.05
2009-10 15 2.06
2010-11 40 2.32
Source: Data received on 18.05.2011 from State Transport
department using the RTI Act
5. 72
SAFETY
TrafficInfraTech • October - November ’12 • www.trafficinfratech.com
2010-2011 financial year for building and
maintaining pavements in the city. In con-
trast, the city and the state government
spend large sums of money for building
expressways and motorable roads.
In spite of all this, the traffic police blames
the high pedestrian fatalities on jaywalking,
pedestrians not using the foot over bridges
& subways and recklessly crossing the roads
without considering the speeding vehicles.
But in reality, it is evident that the appalling
condition of the limited pedestrian infrastruc-
ture is the reason for such high fatality rate.
To implement the various road safety
programmes, the state government had for-
mulated a Road Safety Fund under the Tamil
Nadu Road Safety Rules in 2000 with an ini-
tial allocation of `2 crore which has been
raised to `65cr for 2012-13. This is mainly
funded by the state government but also
receives accruals from the fines collected for
traffic violations.
Between 2006 and 2010, the Government
of Tamil Nadu had sanctioned approximately
`84cr for various road safety measures
which included the purchase of road safety
equipment, improvement of blackspots and
upgrading of intersections & accident relief
centres. In 2010-11, an additional `10 crore
was made available to the district collec-
tors to provide compensation to accident
victims under the Chief Minister’s Accident
Relief Fund (Working group of Road Safety
Education, September 2011).
To increase funding for road safety, the
state government amended the Tamil Nadu
Motor Vehicles Taxation Act, 1974 in June
2009 to allow it to levy a road safety tax
on all new vehicles. This is a one time tax
payable at the time of registration, ranging
from `250 for motorcycles to `1500 for light
motor vehicles and `2000 for others. Since
the inception of the Act, the government
has collected `119.159 crore till March 2011
as road safety tax. In the financial year 2010-
2011, Chennai alone had collected `15.5
crore as road safety tax. Yet, only `2.32
crore was allocated for the road safety pro-
gramme despite an ever increasing accident
trend in the city. Hence, substantial amount
of money has been collected but very little
has been spent on effective enforcement
and preventive measures.
In order to improve road safety the
current focus on vehicular safety and infra-
structure for motorised transport needs
to be expanded to include pedestrians
and non-motorised transport. This can
be achieved only if there is a reduction
of private vehicles and people switch to
sustainable public transport. More funds
need to be allocated for constructing infra-
structure for pedestrians and cyclists. The
current share of public transport in the city
is 29% and with the advent of modern and
more comfortable public transit systems
like metro, the city intends to increase this
share to 55%. But these public transport
systems cannot be successful if there is no
safe access for pedestrians and cyclists.
Hence, the emphasis on safe pedestrian
infrastructure is the key to Chennai becom-
ing a safe and sustainable city.
Roshan Toshniwal
(The author is
an architect and
urban planner. He
is a consultant with
Transparent Chennai,
CDF (Centre for
Development Finance),
IFMR and also teaches
at the Measi Academy
of Architecture in Chennai. He has been
researching road accidents and safety in
Chennai for the last two years.
To reduce congestion
and increase the traffic
speed, the authorities have
introduced various traffic
engineering techniques like
road widening, flyovers
and one-way streets. But
they have neglected and
marginalised the pedestrian
infrastructure forcing the
pedestrians to walk on the
roads, thereby compromising
their safety and slowing down
the traffic further.
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