Forum to protect citizen’s right to walk launched

Pune As part of the national conference on the theme ‘Right to Walk’, organised by Parisar — a civil society organisation, which concluded on Saturday, the organisation

Pune As part of the national conference on the theme ‘Right to Walk’, organised by Parisar — a civil society organisation, which concluded on Saturday, the organisation launched Step (Steps towards empowering pedestrians) a citizens’ forum.

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Taking cue from the keynote address by Mahesh Zagade, ex-municipal commissioner of Pune, who is passionate about walking, stressed on a design to reduce the per capital energy consumption for transit, with walking taking priority and promoting the concept of walking to work.

He also said about the laxity of driving licence system, where anyone who applies for a licence gets one. Hence, more and more unfit drivers are on the roads, making roads unsafe for pedestrians.

‘Steps towards empowering pedestrians’ was launched as a citizen pedestrian forum by Mahesh Zagade, Sujit Patwardhan from Parisar and Avaneesh Akhoury from AXA Business Services.

The forum has been established to bring pedestrians together in an organised manner to demand their right to walk freely in the city. The forum will be engaging with people from across the city to bring about awareness regarding pedestrian rights and advocate for change on ground through people’s participation.

The Step website was also launched at the event. The conference touched upon different aspects of walkable cities like the diverse footpath users, conflict on footpath, obstructions, health implications of walking in the city, understanding why the pedestrian remains invisible or ignored, the process and challenges of urban design for good footpaths and finally the empowerment of pedestrians.