disabled friendly footpaths

Pedestrians in India face a daily risk on roads, despite having the legal right of way. Systemic neglect in infrastructure design, with a severe lack of usable footpaths, forces them onto carriageways. This leads to a tragic pattern of pedestrian fatalities, highlighting a critical failure in urban planning that prioritizes vehicles over people.

Every morning, state government employee Aruna Devi dreads changing buses at Adyar depot to get to Chepauk, where her office, Ezhilagam, is located. Being visually challenged, Aruna prefers putting her life on the line and waiting on the road rather than getting on to an uneven pavement and risking a fall.

The Supreme Court has affirmed unobstructed footpaths as a fundamental right under Article 21, mandating accessible walkways for all. However, a TOI investigation in Delhi reveals that disabled-friendly pavements are largely a myth. Obstructions like vendor stalls and missing tactile paving render them inaccessible to the visually impaired.

South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) must carry out its social disability audit in Vasant Vihar area in a “proper manner” and its officials should be able to move in wheelchairs “independently” and without assistance to check if the footpaths are usable, the Delhi high court told the civic body on Monday.

Special pavement for the physically challenged by the Chennai Corporation' reads the sign on a wall on Ranjit Road in Kotturpuram. Anbarasan, a person with physical disability, looks at the sign and laughs.

Roads in Haryana, particularly those in Gurgaon, have been designed almost exclusively to handle large volumes of traffic with little thought shown for other users, particularly people with physical disabilities, a government department has said, raising a concern that citizens have been voicing for years.

Activists have blamed poor infrastructure planning for the Tuesday's accident, wherein two blind students were injured after being hit by a PMPML bus on Karve Road.

More than 20 Exnora members gathered opposite the Commissionerate for the Welfare of the Differently Abled at KK Nagar on Sunday morning to check if it was disabled friendly.

The differently abled people have launched a campaign to sensitize the public to the importance keeping pavements vehicles-free.

What happens when a footpath is widened for universal accessibility? Fifteen differently abled individuals, who carried out a test run of one such stretch in Vile Parle on Sunday, found illegally parked motorcycles and a hawker with his wares on the footpath.

A city-based NGO has filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Bombay High Court demanding disabled-friendly infrastructure at public places in Pune and Pimpri Chinchwad.

In a first, the municipal corporation has set up a think tank, including citizens' groups and transport experts, to resolve traffic- and transport- related problems.

To make footpaths more pedestrian and disabled friendly, the Public Works Department (PWD) issued orders on Friday to take steps to remove all constructions by private individuals.

CHENNAI: The corporation has widened footpaths in the city but they remain inaccessible because many people use them as parking lots for cars and two-wheelers.

There is no deterring a squatter or motorist from habitually persecuting the pedestrian.