I stood there with some engineering diagrams in hand, one elderly gentleman, presumably a member of the middle class, approached me. He asked if I was involved in the project. I said yes, we designed and prepared the engineering documents.

He then proceeded to advise. He said he had seen the footpath coming out, on to the road, around various encroachments, including the temple at the BSNL/Shastri Nagar junction. He said we were encouraging encroachments and reducing space for cars/traffic. Also that we should meet the Assistant Commissioner of the Zone X and discuss this with him.

My first reaction was irritation. As such everyone there were tense. Imagine being accused of promoting encroachment when serious demolitions were happening just a few meters away! I tried explaining that the work is still in progress. That we are very sympathetic to the plight of the hawkers and their livelihood and that we have tried our best to make sure both pedestrians and hawkers/shops are accommodated, etc. The design job on a corridor like LB is, as you can imagine, not easy. Many competing interests, ground reality very different from what we design sitting in an office, etc. It has taken a lot of walking, literally, on site and from one department to another, to get it even remotely right.

(Importantly, most, most importantly, the final say on any design, implementation, demolition and construction is with the city authorities. Not with some NGOwalla or some other citizens. And that is the way it should be. Lest you the reader get the wrong ideas.)

Few seconds later, I told myself – no one asked Chennai City Connect to do anything. We are doing all this voluntarily, to make the city a better place. If you volunteer, you have to take the good and the bad that comes with it, including the criticism. Getting defensive, offensive …. self pity or irritation has no place in this. If you are willing to enjoy the glowing quotes and pictures in the newspaper, you should be ready to enjoy the criticisms too.

But the most interesting, and most vexing, point is the difference in focus of various groups. Ask any middle class person about footpath and he will immediately  start complaining about encroachments and insist that all encroachers  should be removed, including hawkers. There is an underlying resentment in the middle class heart that someone somewhere is getting away with encroachment. This anger is usually directed most at the most visible of the “encroachers” – the pookaris and pazhakharans.

To make a bigger point of this small incident, that is the tragedy of our urban scene. Hawkers are first and foremost serving, including us the middle class. Also, they are earning a living, thereby not becoming a burden on us, if that is your concern.

But point taken, that that does not mean they can sit anywhere they want, especially obstructing pedestrians. But where else do they go ? I would argue this is the biggest failure of our urban planning, especially at a micro level. There are enough national and international policies on hawking, etc. All written in sympathetic tones. But these are at best guidelines, and at worst useless, unless the issue is dealt with on a micro level – the LB level. Creating space for commerce by hawking, side by side with pedestrian space, while ensuring hawkers and shops don’t encroach into walking space, is the real challenge.

I am sure, when the LB project is done and inaugurated, one criticism will be that we have not demanded more demolitions. I would argue that if  LB is a success at all, even in a small way,  this precisely would be the reason. Being sensitive to the fact that your design could destroy someones livelihood should be at the core of the project. This does not mean compromising on space for pedestrian or traffic management, for that matter. My experience, short experience, is that designing demolition is easier, accommodating is far tougher, and smarter.

Also, imagine if we had started this project many months ago, by repeatedly harping on all the demolitions we expect Corporation to accomplish, even before they saw any value in this project, would it have come this far ?

I hope to write a blog soon titled “How to tame your encroachment”, about how encroachment demolitions need a context to succeed.

As you would expect from all such projects on Indian streets there has to be some comedy. To give you the context -

LB footpath will have concrete driveways and ramps in many locations – establishments where vehicles will enter, end of footpaths, etc. In few critical areas EB boxes as in the way and the contractor can’t do his job. There are many chickens and eggs in such projects, and most of the time, the chickens are missing. So you wait for them to arrive and lay the eggs. But when the chicken arrives the eggs are missing and the chickens end up waiting for the egg to arrive. This would be funny if it weren’t frustrating, even for the Corporation officials.

Same applies for the people who are supposed to move and upgrade the traffic lights, remove a dead tree that was right in the middle of the famous traffic island of ours. There are also the private property owners who are supposed to do their part and end up delaying.

Anyway, the EB men arrived on Saturday last. The comedy was that they arrive and start shifting the box to the wrong location. I was in a meeting in another part of town. Our site engineer calls and says, “Saaar! they are putting it in the wrong place”.

Like the lover I mentioned above, we were both excited and irritated, with the news. Excited because finally the EB team had arrived. But turned up only tell you that he/she is now in love with someone else.

After some back and forth, and quick thinking on the part of our site engineer Mr Veeraraghavan, (who has been appointed by the SSPDL and CREDAI, as part of their contribution to the project, both organisations are members of Chennai City Connect), the effort was saved. Luckily and otherwise, EB guys started moving the easiest and the least significant. Luckily, we got the opportunity to explain to them the locations of other boxes in that stretch. Unfortunately, moving the urgent ones will take few more days.

FYI. Corporation team has to write to TNEB requesting the move of the boxes. In this case Corporation is paying TNEB to cost of moving. As you can imagine, lots of public policy/urban street management improvements to be made here. That is, in many other cities of the world, Corporation owns the street. No utility can be placed without its permission and approval of the locations, etc. In Chennai though some some this exists, there is some confusion. From what I know, Corporation in its drive to improve pedestrian facilities in Chennai is paying TNEB the cost of moving these boxes. It is all tax payer money anyway, I guess. As far as people can walk on proper footpaths who cares…. at least for time being.

One more piece of comedy. To our surprise and a bit of shock (no pun intended) the two sides of the LB Road, east and west, are the responsibility of two different offices of TNEB. East side EB man was joking that he is from the “Sodukadu” (cemetery in Besant Nagar). West side comes under Indira Nagar team. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to us since we found out during the tendering of the LB project, the two sides come under two different Wards. Hence two different tenders and two different contractors.  Can the Gods of Footpaths play any crueler pranks on us?

But now there is huge momentum. Prepare to walk on a decent piece of LB footpath soon.

Finally, I must say this. Funny and tedious all this may sound, I must say that every official, no matter what his/her title, have been extremely courteous and supportive of the project. This shouldn’t be a surprise yet it is. Each of these officials are in fire fighting mode. They put in very long hours, have to manage the almost impossible, yet they never lose their cool. Even under all this pressure and delays, many a times from our end, they are decent.We have changed designs slightly every time we realised that ground reality is different from what we thought, or when we realised that there was a better way to solve the problem, etc. Basically we the ivory tower intellectuals and designers pondering, standing in the middle of the project, , they have been patient. Neat guys!

As I have always maintained, it is not the staff, it is the system, stupid! (My apologies …. after Bill Clinton’s team came up with the “It’s the economy, stupid” there has been various versions of it. This is mine).

Many of the shops on the stretch where the footpath work is going on had been asked by CoC to demolish their front portion to make space for the footpath. These stores, sometimes their steps or even a big portion were on the footpath.

Now, it is not easy to figure out who is encroaching and who is  not. (Luckily CMDA has digitized a lot of the property boundaries and marked what they believe is encroachment). Since we wanted to keep the demolishing to a minimum, since our focus is footpath, we identified where the footpaths were less than the required width. CoC officials then went shop to shop, marked the area and requested the shop owners to basically shave off their front portions.

Initially nothing happened. As expected. Interestingly there are good reasons for it. CoC officials and others have this explanation. Shop keepers may be more than happy to comply. But they too have little faith that projects like this would actually materialize and conclude.

So if the shopkeepers comply and demolish, and if the CoC does not follow through and deliver their part, no one gains. This time around the  CoC officials put pressure on the contractors to finish laying the curb stones, traffic islands, etc. Seeing this, and additional reminders, convinced the shopkeepers that CoC is serious.

It must be added that credit goes to CoC officials. They were under lot of pressure to “adjust” a bit. “Can’t we adjust and loosen the standards a bit and save the trouble of demolishing?” were the initial and immediate questions. But CoC officials made it very clear that there will be no adjustments and that the Mayor and higher officials are very serious about pedestrian facilities in Chennai.

Then one Saturday morning CoC landed on LB with tools and machinery to demolish. Interesting titbit. Contractors, who are laying the footpath, etc. are hesitant to do the demolishing since they worry about the shopkeepers’ wrath. They want CoC officials to do the demolishing. So that Saturday, CoC men did some damages, thereby marking the boundaries.

From then the shopkeepers acted fast. Some asked the contractors themselves to do the demolishing, hence saving them the headache of hiring demolishing crew. Other shops hired their own crew since more elaborate demolishing and reconstruction was required.

Some interesting photos and stories behind it.

Please note: whether rest of the property is an encroachment or not is outside the scope of this project. We are only interested in creating space for footpaths and when necessary, reducing congestion and improved traffic flow.

For a long time, Vasantha Bhavan hotel (VBH) has managed to convinced past contractors not to build footpath in front of their establishment. VBH used this to park their customers’ bikes. They even had a security guy to enforce this. Today VBH’s stairs that stick out into the public space has been demolished. VBH is putting his steps into his property.

Aruna Shoe Shop (AS) and nearby two or three shops are interesting cases. AS had only about 4 feet of space in front of the shop. I suspect the electrical transformer placed badly few meters away had created a “shadow” area. This made it impossible for pedestrians to walk in front of AS. Today AS and nearby shops have moved back considerably. We should have more than 8 feet of public space. A properly designed concrete ramp will be built in front of AS.

Petrol Bunk (PB). All around PB was open space. Vehicles would zip in and out since there was no concept of driveway nor footpath around PB. Pedestrians beware. Today, still under construction, are driveways and a much wider footpath. Initially the Traffic Police were concerned since they felt the space was being taken away from the carriage way (road). But now they are convinced this is fine. We are awaiting PB to move the giant Indian Oil tower that eats away from public space. Should happen in a few days.

There are some smaller reconstructions along this strip.

Finally, Lakshmi Sagar Hotel (LSH). This is the starting of the congested strip of footpath (if any) towards the Adyar flyover. LSH had eaten into the public space. Actually the building that housed LSH. But LSH had his juice stall outside. As expected all the following stores had also followed the example and eaten into public space.

This demolition is the most dramatic. Even their first floor balcony that sticks out has been demolished. Some of the shops along this strip have moved their rolling shutters back few feet.

Pretty cool!

One major move awaited is from the TNEB. They are supposed to move their utility boxes to the predefined utility strip (2 feet of space between the footpath and the road). CoC has written letters to them and done all they can. We hope TNEB will move the boxes ASAP since the final finishing of the footpath depends on this.

The rest of the space on the utility strip will be used for landscaping (and maybe guard rails). This will beautify the place. But more importantly, provide a safe barrier between pedestrians and vehicles on the road.

Here is a quick snapshot of the project:

First time we walked on LB with the intention of finding space for world class pedestrian facilities, we were confident that 80% or even 90% of the road has no real problem. At least as far as finding space was concerned. It was a matter of badly designed footpath. It is as simple as that.

The real issue was convincing the rest of the well wishers and citizens that this is possible. You encounter all kinds of questions and explanation of why it cannot be done. Few are

• People of Chennai lack awareness about walking on footpaths. They will only walk on the road no matter how good the footpath is
• There is no space. Hawkers and encroachers need to be removed else nothing can be done.
• Corporation officials are too callous/corrupt to consider any of your suggestions. It is their job to all this and they have not done it which just proves our claim.
• There is no money. Chennai, and India, is too poor to provide good facilities to its citizens.

Most of this, most of the time, is not true. Here are some quick observations:

• Footpaths are badly constructed, if any exists at all. It will take an Olympic athlete to climb up and down one foot high, or sometimes higher, footpath. To make matters worse, the footpath are in pieces, i.e., there is no footpath in front of most shops, houses, etc. Which means walking on footpath is like using a stairmaster at the gym.
• When a pedestrian sees such a footpath, he/she cannot summon enough will and energy to climb the first piece of the high footpath. So he starts walking on the road, which by the way is smooth and straight (relatively speaking).
• There is space for footpath, most of the time. Next time you are on the road do the following: look how much space there is. Don’t worry about the current condition of the footpath. Just the space available.
• Also, if there are stretches of footpath that has been constructed well, like in front of the Rippon Building (main office of CoC), observe how pedestrians automatically walk on them. Why? Because it is the easy thing to do. No awareness training needed!

But LB project has also been a humbling experience for all of the activists, experts, volunteers.

• The interconnectedness of the problems is daunting at first.
• Corporation officials and engineers know things that we don’t. It is humbling indeed when they point things out which you never even considered.
• Officials in general want to help you succeed. But don’t just throw ideas at them. Each of our ideas needs to be tested, piloted, etc. Someone has to do a lot of homework before even the simplest of idea is implemented. The system does not have the capabilities, yet, to take every idea, even the most practical sounding and translate into reality.
• Most corporation officials are just ordinary, decent people, trying to do their best under the given circumstances.
• They face problems which may not be obvious to us the ordinary citizens. Like there are a lot of genuine and bogus interest groups that they need to taken into consideration. Our solutions need to be aware of these.
• The capacity of the system is really poor in some cases. Also, the officials are in fire-fighting mode. There is no time or a dedicated team to sit and think about how to make things better. In developed cities there are complicated links between academics, officials, experts, committees, panels, etc. So standards are developed, constantly upgraded, tested, piloted, debated, etc. There is a process by which these gets added to the official books of the city and translated into actual implementable facilities. These links are pretty much missing in our cities.
• Even experts, or especially experts, can get cocky. What appears very simple on paper may cause, for example, terrible traffic jam, on the road.
• Cynicism and scepticism of citizens can be overcome. But it comes back in a flash at every set back. Considerable energy needs to be spent just keeping the morale of the team intact and move forward. It will take a long time for our cities to gain the trust of citizens for good.

We expected them to say, “this is Chennai, you can’t expect western standards to work here”. To our surprise the Corporation team took parts of it and sent out a circular to all the zones. The circular detailed the new standards of how to construct the footpath of Chennai.

For example, if the footpath is 5 meters or longer, then the sloping at the end of the footpath should start one meter from the edge. This makes sure that the edges don’t drop off sharply, rather slopes in a way that people can walk down or climb up.

Example for this is right in front of the Rippon Building, the main office of CoC and on G N Chetty Road. Every time I visit the CoC I get to watch pedestrians actually walking on Chennai footpath. You see them walking down, crossing in front of the gate and then walking up the footpath. If the footpath is clean and has no debris, then you see them walking all the way to the other end. They don’t walk on the road.

Same Chennites as before. I don’t think anyone gave them a quick lesson on how to walk on a footpath.

We are happy to inform you that our designs for LB have been enthusiastically accepted by the Corporation of Chennai (CoC) which is in the process of implementing. The budgets are being prepared for tendering after the elections.

The LB was done under the MOU Chennai City Connect (CCC) signed with the CoC. The idea of a formal MoU received very good support from the Mayor of Chennai, the Commissioner and their team.

The following are salient features of LB and MOU.
- Help understand the ground conditions and design pedestrian facilities on a stretch on LB.
- Consider various elements of pedestrian facilities in the design like footpath, landscaping with appropriate native trees and shrubs, bus bay, road crossings, cycle track if possible, proper place for utilities, street signage, etc.
- Using the learning and international standards as template, compile standards and guidelines for Chennai
- Redesign junctions to improve traffic flow, provide right turn/u-turn lanes, left turn lanes and other mechanisms as and when possible
- Improve traffic flow using modern software and practices to virtually test turning radius, lane width, location of median etc. using accurate survey data.

As a practical approach to our work we also decided to accommodate existing encroachments, hawkers, trees and other realities of Indian roads. We did this in order to assure the proposed designs and ideas are implementable and to protect livelihood of stakeholders as best as we could. Our focus was recovery of enough space for pedestrians. Additionally, improve traffic flow and design of facilities by optimising the existing space.

To study the existing conditions a team from CCC comprising of traffic and transport experts, urban planners, student volunteers etc. walked along LB, took photographs, detailed measurements, notes on problem areas that require special considerations and so on.
Dr Murthy Bondada, Fulbright Scholar at IIT was one of the enthusiastic leaders of the team. He gave us valuable guidance and constantly encouraged us to keep the pedestrian in mind.
LB was sponsored by CREDAI (Confederation of Real Estate Developers Association of India) which is a member of CCC. Since CREDAI members are experts at construction we were very happy to receive technical and process advice from the CREDAI team.
The data, photographs and other information were carefully documented and discussed. Our student volunteers conducted a stakeholder survey of police, hawkers, pedestrians, bus drivers, car and bike users, etc. We also interacted with other experts from IIT and such institutions for their valuable help and advice.

A detailed survey of the road was conducted. We took special care to note the location of trees, existing storm water inlets, road width, existing footpath, driveways of shops and houses, etc. Accurate information about these were very essential for proper design of bus bays; proper turning radius for big and small vehicles; islands for pedestrians; curb and gutter of appropriate dimensions in alignment with storm water drains; utility strip for accommodating utility boxes, lampposts, garbage bins, bus stops; driveways that do not inconvenience the pedestrian (even in a wheelchair) etc.

We interacted with nodal officers, engineering team and other officials from the CoC to take their suggestions. Since many of our recommendations would have a big impact on the traffic we extensively interacted with the Traffic Police. They even gave us permissions to experiment with cones and barricades at appropriate locations and paint lanes to study the effect of our recommendations before the “concrete is poured”.

For example, we have proposed a right lane at Shastri Nagar junction. When implemented this would require slight change in the location of the median, etc. But we were allowed to place cones and test the behaviour of vehicle users, self disciplining of drivers, etc. This generated a lot of excitement among the Traffic Constables manning LB and we received utmost cooperation from them.

Using data and observations from similar experiments we checked and rechecked our assumptions and design. We made extensive presentation to the officials at the CoC. The ensuing discussions and interaction with officials were extremely motivating to the CCC team. One additional output of this pilot is the positive attitude and interaction among CCC team and officials.

After the final designs were generated, a list of material was prepared for budgeting. The documents given to the CoC include:
- Road and footpath geometry and details. These are extensively detailed engineering diagrams and dimensions that include construction details of driveways with proper angles and degrees, pedestrian islands. Also, we have given diagrams of current and proposed location of utility boxes among other things.
- Utility strip and details of components and their locations.
- Signage details with dimensions, fonts, pole construction dimensions
- Bus stop design taking into consideration various factors as pedestrian entry, advertisements maximization, safety, lighting, etc.

Overall we have received nothing but enthusiastic response from CoC and other relevant departments and agencies. We believe, one of the reasons for this is, our designs are practical and have taken as many details and concerns into account as possible. We have not recommended cutting of a single tree; we have accommodated almost all the stakeholder we could; we have not taken a biased approach towards any stakeholder including car drivers, pedestrians, etc. We have made every effort to optimise what already exist, taking the dynamics of LB into account.

CoC is in the process of preparing tenders for LB. CoC has subsequently requested our help in redesigning other areas in the city. We are finalizing the standards and guideline documents for CoC’s consideration and adoption.