CHENNAI : Road safety week passed off earlier this month with the police and the transport department organising a series of functionswith none to highlight the plight of cyclists and pedestrians.Non-motorised transport, activists note, has lost importance in traffic policies, though State Transport department statistics show that 56 persons died in accidents involving non-motorised vehicles and pedestrians in 2004. This constitutes about 10 per cent of the total number of fatal accidents recorded in 2004.

The Transport department failed to highlight the fatalities, though the National Urban Transport Policy, 2005 accorded it significance in its studies on non-motorised transport, which are eco-friendly and take up little road space.

The policy noted that non-motorised modes were also exposed to greater risk as they shared a common right of way with motorised vehicles, and highlighted the need to address the safety concerns of cyclists and pedestrians.

One way of mitigating the risk, the policy noted, was to provide a segregated right of way for bicycles and pedestrians.

Segregated cycle lanes

In the last eight or nine years in Chennai, the segregated bicycle lanes on thoroughfares such as the Inner Ring Road, Anna Salai, Poonamallee High Road and Sardar Patel Road, have been obliterated.

On Sardar Patel Road, after the construction of a flyover, both the sidewalk and the bicycle tracks have virtually disappeared on certain stretches.

On the Inner Ring Road, which was developed using World Banks funds as part of the Tamil Nadu Urban Development Project-I in the mid 1990s, had clearly marked out a lane for slow moving vehicles (SMVs). Concrete `buttons' set out the outer-most lane of the IRR for the SMVs.

But the SMV lane has almost "disappeared" due to increasing encroachments, use of these lanes for parking trucks, the creation of the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminal.

Transportation experts and citizen activists agree with the national policy, which notes that, apart from improving safety, the segregation of vehicles moving at different speeds would help improve traffic flow, increase the average speed of traffic and reduce emissions.Such segregated paths would be useful for improving access to major public transport stations. Access paths, coupled with safe bicycle parking places, would contribute towards increasing the use of public transport, it said.

Special zones

Several cities have special safety zones for bicyclists and pedestrians. In Chennai, the Indian Institute of Technology and Anna University have regulations that discourage resident students, scholars, faculty members and other staff from using `smoke emitting' vehicles. The `green campus initiative' of Anna University clearly spells out the areas where motorised transport is not allowed, at least for students and faculty members.

Even the National Road Safety Policy says that that the design and construction of all road facilities should take into account the needs of the recognised group called the `vulnerable road users'.

However, during the entire observance of the road safety week, there was little evidence to show that these policy statements were given importance by transport department, town planners or civic authorities.

But this is not to take away the complaints from drivers of other bigger vehicles about indiscipline among the bicyclists as also pedestrians.

Almost all main roads on the city are fraught with danger in the form of jaywalking and cyclists who dart across roads, cut lanes and do not stop at signals. Vehicle owners feel that it is time to codify road rules to curb indiscipline among the non-motorised transport drivers. On several occasions, bigger vehicle drivers while attempting to avoid them get into accidents, sometimes proving fatal.

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