Chandigarh may soon become a walkers’ paradise. Also, the city authorities may soon make efforts in making the City Beautiful cyclist-friendly. Celebrating World Environment Day on Friday, the Advisor to UT Administrator Vijay Kumar Dev declared that Chandigarh will soon be made pedestrian and cyclist friendly. “The Administration will lay more emphasis in coming months to see road designs, stricter fines for non-abeyance of traffic rules and promote walking and cycling in Chandigarh…taking it towards status of ‘Smart City in India’,” said Dev during an environment day function at Elante mall.
Sharing his commitment to promote culture and safety of walking and cycling in Chandigarh, he said, “Walking and cycling are still considered as the best form of exercises over the world but the pedestrians and cyclists can no longer move around the city safely as the motorists are careless about the rules. The figures for Chandigarh show that travel in the city has become more risky with accident rates having gone up”.
He said that the pedestrians and cyclists constitute the largest single group of people dying in road accidents in Chandigarh. Thus, he said that besides promoting walking and cycling in the city, the administration will also chalk out better and safe road designs, along with stricter fines for non-compliance of the traffic rules.
The UT’s Department of Environment and Yuvsatta NGO released a ‘Status Of Environment Report Chandigarh-2014’. Introducing about the status of environment report of 2015 for Chandigarh, UT Environment Director Santosh Kumar said that Chandigarh is the greenest city in India with 38 percent of the area under green cover.
“We are also committed to make it number one in many other arenas, be it promoting battery operated vehicles, making Chandigarh a model solar city, strict control over air pollution, strict control over hazardous waste, management of cycle tracks, massive plantations or availability of clean drinking water etc,” he said.