Right of Way: The right to walk safely demands more than urban design standards for demarcated pavements
The Supreme Court’s recent judgment, which recognises walking on demarcated footpaths as a fundamental right, has urban designers celebrating the scaling of well-designed streets nationwide
The Supreme Court’s recent judgment, which recognises walking on demarcated footpaths as a fundamental right, has urban designers celebrating the scaling of well-designed streets nationwide. As India pursues Viksit Bharat, the ruling offers a real opportunity to reshape streets that have long defied the Western sense of urban order our planning norms espouse. Prevailing urban design standards in India already institutionalise space for safe pavements within street rights-of-way. Yet the human cost of unsafe streets remains stark — a Government of India report shows the top 10 cities accounted for 46.34% of road accident deaths among all 50 Million-Plus Cities in 2024, with pedestrians accounting for 20.6%. Delhi recorded the highest toll, followed by Bengaluru and Jaipur. So, why has the implementation of national standards for safe streets remained ineffective, and what can we do about it? India’s cities probably defy any centralised codes for safe street and pavement design. At the same time, most municipal authorities are not capacitated to customise the challenge. Given this gap between central norms and local realities, the court’s judgment offers an opportunity to re-evaluate standards that only partially align with the cities they were meant to serve.
Three structural problems merit attention. The first concerns the mismatch between existing norms and India’s diverse urban contexts. guidelines, i.e., the Indian Roads Congress’s IRC-103-2012 and the URDPFI Guidelines, were formulated to foster “healthy streets” that prioritise walking, cycling, universal accessibility, and road safety. All norms prescribe footpaths up to 4 metres wide, with a non-negotiable minimum of 1.8 metres, even in resource-deficit areas. However, not all streets in Indian cities can accommodate this well-meaning standard. Such provisions may suit planned arterial roads, but prove largely unworkable in older precincts such as Chickpete, the weakly connected networks of peri-urban Hyderabad, or unplanned settlements in suburban Mumbai, where narrow streets and intense street vending leave little room for standardised pavement widths. The result is often a parado oversized footpaths on arterial roads with low pedestrian volumes, and impossible minimum-width mandates in the city’s most crowded localities. The second problem is of scale and material specifications. India’s 4,500-plus cities allocate up to 25% of urban land to roads, most of which are local streets where pedestrian movement predominates.
The BriefWire