The one day workshop organized to discussdesign and engineering interventions to improve pedestrian safety on road and designing safer street concluded successfully. It was organized byUrban Mass Transit Company Limited (UMTC) in collaboration with Nagpur Smart and Sustainable City Development Corporation Limited (NSSCDCL), Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) under ‘Mobilise Your City’ (MYC) initiative at Hotel Tuli Imperial, Nagpur.Mobilise Your City is a technical assistance program globally supported by theEuropean Union &implemented through AgenceFrançaise de Développement (AFD) in India.
The workshop was inaugurated by Mr. Mahesh Morone, Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NSSCDCL, and was attended by more than 80 participants including officials fromNSSCDCL, NMC, NIT, Maha Metro, PWD, Regional Transport Office (RTO), Transport Undertaking, Traffic Police as well as faculty and students from VNIT, SMMCA, IDEAS etc.
As part of the sessions there were presentations on need for promoting sustainable mobility to reduce GHG emission coming from vehicles, Haryana Vision Zero program adopted at state level to reduce road crashes and fatalities as well as various components and principles to be adopted for designing safer streets. The presentations shared various examples of other cities where street re-design have helped reduce pedestrian & 2 wheeler conflict points whereby reducing crashes and fatalities. Safer streets result in safer pedestrians and safer cities. Increased pedestrianization, cycling and public transportation usage will result in sustainable mobility.
In the second half of the session, the participants were divided into smaller groups and taken to near-by junction for a road and junction audit. As part of workshop the six groups went to Lokmat junction with moderators from UMTC and WRI to identify the concerns, bottlenecks and brainstorm solutions.
After the site visit participants worked on junction design proposals for the problems that they identified during their site visit and thereafter each group presented their proposals. Some of the key obsevations were lack of continuous footpath, ramps for ease of pedestrian and differently abled movement, unregulated on-street parking, proper traffic island and pedestrian refuge areas.
Mr. Mahesh Moroney NSSCDCL, Mr. Devendra Mahajan NSSCDCL, Mr. UdayGhiye NSSCDCL, Mr. Rajesh Dufare NSSCDCL, Mr. Manish Soni NSSCDCL, Mrs. Ashalata G. Khapare Police Inspector (Traffic), Om Sontakke API (Traffic), P.P. Dhankar (NIT), Dr. Vilas Bakde VNIT, were some of the key participants. The workshop ended with a vote of thanks to all the officials and invitation for future workshops.
