Published on Herald Review (24/12/17)
Cars and Motorbikes have become our prosthetic devices. Making Goa ‘ walkable’ implies making the car an optional instrument of freedom rather than a prosthetic device. In order to make people leave their cars and walk, there needs to be a proper reason to walk: the walk has to be safe, feel safe, comfortable and the walk has to be interesting.
You’ll see far more people walking in central parts of Margao, Panjim and Vasco than in modern developments areas like Gogol, Taleigao, or Chicalim. It is not about just physically being able to walk somewhere but also about all the things that influence ones choice to take care of daily activities on foot.
400m is the distance an average person can walk in five minutes. If it becomes longer, people choose motor vehicles. Separated land uses, dead-end streets, large city blocks ( or gated complexes), poorly designed or arranged developments also discourage walking since such places are undesirable or unsafe to walk or more than 5 minutes away.
The entire highway in Goa has no footpath, even though hundreds of people walk along these roads with vehicles zipping by inches away at 70 kms per hour. Pedestrians account for nearly one- fourth of all road deaths in Goa. When I questioned the PWD, TCP and GSIDC departments under RTI, they all stated that there is no policy or law making footpaths compulsorily. In other words, we are building 99% of our transportation infrastructure for less than half the population who own vehicles.
Constructing footpaths and sidewalks require a fundamental change in mindset. We have to sacrifice or reduce the width of existing roads to accommodate sidewalks.
Every city, town or village is made up of a group of building or houses surrounded by roads, which forms on “ Block”. Walkable cities have block sizes of around 60- 100 meters, similar to central Vasco, Panjim and Margao city. When you have such cities, you can have a well- connected two- lane- road city. When the block size is increased to 300 meters, cities are less walkable and need four and six lane roads. A study done in 20 Cities in California show that when block sizes are doubled, the number of accident on non highway roads increase four times.
In order to make places more walkable, residential and commercial land used must be mixed so that stores, healthcare, schools, markets and offices are walking distance away, both from homes and transit systems. Blocks should not be too large with adequate short cuts between them. Public spaces including markets must be people oriented and not vehicle oriented. Neighbourhoods must be pleasant to walk through with buildings, streets and landscaping which focus on peoples experiences.
Placing buildings close to the streets, avoiding dead walls and including trees along sidewalks are universally effective ways to make streets more pedestrian friendly.
Public Transport is one of the most import aspects of walkable cities. Villages and towns that don’t provide access to public transport force its residents to use cars. This trend, in turn, shapes the towns and villages around cars since they now need to accommodate more and more vehicles, which in turn forces people to give up parts of their land for road expansion.
The cost of roads maintenance will be far lower if Goa is made walkable. Thus Government will save money for itself and for its residents. The money saved can be used to build a translucent roof over footpaths to protect pedestrians against the harsh Goan sun. It also makes the cities clean, fresh and “ cool” where more people want to be these days. There are several health incentives for making Goa a walkable State, especially in Urban areas. The obesity rates in Goa are staggering, especially among children. Heart and cardiovascular diseases are at an all-time high and the average age of people living with these diseases is decreasing every year.
These are all a result of our urban design. Of course, diet impacts health but inactivity born out of our landscape, where there are no longer such things as footpaths, is driving our weight up. Studies done in the USA showed that if you lived in a walkable neighbourhood, you were 35% likely to be overweight and if you lived in a less walkable neighbourhood you were 65 per cent likely to be overweight. The latter is termed as “ obesogenic” neighbourhoods. In other words, our health is impacted significantly by environmental induced inactivity.
Diseases and deaths due to Lung related diseases and motor vehicle crashes are also reasons why we need to change the way we design our infrastructure. If the city is designed around cars, this makes it easy for those cars to smash into each other.
Making Goa walkable has to be an initiative not just of the State Government but of every individual village, town and city. Gram shabhas have to make this conscious choice and pass resolutions demanding Walkable streets. Town planners & elected representatives have to change their mindset and this must be reflected in Goa’s Regional Plan. Only then we can make Goa a truly Walkable State.
Photo Credit : gpsmycity.com
Avinash Tavares 