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I can speak on behalf of the team. Our LB road pilot, which just involved 0.5 KM, is a humbling experience. Yet it is a very educational experience—you get to see how the city works. I am using present tense since the tendering and subsequent implementation of the project is pending due to elections.

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.