Recognising the need for promoting sustainable mobility modes like walking, cycling and buses in the city, the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) in partnership with the World Resource Institute (WRI) India would hold a workshop on “Smart Mobility Solutions” here on Thursday.
The workshop would include a keynote presentation Dr Dario Hidalgo of the WRI. The workshop would be chaired by BDA Vice-Chairman Krishan Kumar and attended by national experts in the field of urban transportation.
Urban areas in the first few decades of the 20th century were compact, mixed-use and walkable concentrations of activity. Most streets were shared streets where sustainable modes, including bicycles, animal-pulled carts, and pedestrians, were the dominant modes. They shared the common right-of-way with other public transport, freight, and private motorised modes affording equal respect and safety.
As motorised vehicles increased manifold, the inherent balance of these shared streets was put under stress. Urban roads, particularly, became monopolised by private motor vehicles, pushing other modes to the edges of safe movement.
Bhubaneswar as one of the first planned cities of modern India has a grid network in place with wide roads, multiple gardens and parks to shape the urban environment of the city. However, in the city, conventional planning approaches have focused on private vehicular movement while a large percentage of trips (39 per cent) are performed solely by walking and cycling and public transport modes (22 per cent) including auto-rickshaws and buses.
Even though, these numbers are healthy when compared to non- motorised transport (NMT) modal shares in much of the developed world, the disturbing aspect is the trend of increasing motorisation and decline in NMT and public transport travel. Furthermore, traffic problems, degrading environment, road accidents, and encroachments are the manifestations of such conflicts that slowly ruin the development of the city.