JM road in Pune scores top in walking happiness index

In walking happiness index survey, most respondents preferred JM road followed by streets in Aundh and Bibwewadi where footpath conditions, their design and other aspects were taken into consideration.

Pune: A survey conducted in the city as part of the Pedestrians’ Day to gauge the walking happiness index shows people enjoying walking on the wide continuous footpaths that have been built in some parts. In the survey, most respondents preferred Jungli Maharaj road followed by streets in Aundh and Bibwewadi where footpath conditions, their design and other aspects were taken into consideration. The survey conducted in mid-November was carried out by Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) along with Sustainable Urban Mobility Network (SUM Net) India, Parisar Pune, STPM (Sustainable Transport and Potential Mobility) and transport expert Pranjali Deshpande to gauge walking happiness index to show if pedestrians are indeed happy walking in areas surveyed.

In walking happiness index survey, most respondents preferred JM road followed by streets in Aundh and Bibwewadi where footpath conditions, their design and other aspects were taken into consideration. (HT FILE)

“Walking happiness Index is a tool developed by the Pune Municipal Corporation along with experts in the city to quantify the satisfaction level of pedestrians using simple techniques,” said Aditya Chawande, architect urban designer, project associate at Parisar who was mentor for the survey.

The walking happiness index was launched by the Pune mayor Murlidhar Mohol on Saturday at Laxmi Road open street mall where he promised to continue with the Pedestrians’ Day and also look at keeping the zebra crossings, subways clean and maintained for pedestrians in future too.

“We looked at eight roads selected to represent three categories like streets that have been transformed on the principles of complete street design under the Pune Streets programme (Jungli Maharaj road, Aundh DP road and Bibwewadi road), streets that have been modified with basic footpath improvement interventions (Gulavani Maharaj road, Prabhat road) and streets that will be transformed with better footpaths in coming years by PMC, (Shivarkar garden road, Wanowrie, Loop road, Yerawada and Sinhgad road),” Chawande said.

Jungli Maharaj road scored maximum points when it came to parameters like pedestrian refuge areas while crossing the streets, footpath continuity, footpath width, pedestrian safety, light conditions at night, street furniture, encroachment free footpath. The main street in Aundh saw citizens giving positive response to footpath width and safety while crossing. In Bibwewadi, good lighting in the night and encroachment free footpath earned most points.

“We took ten simple parameters to define the walking happiness index of the street, whereupon the pedestrians scored on each parameter on the scale of 1 to 4, with 1 for poor and 4 for the best. This is not a technical audit, instead we asked people walking on the streets on how they liked the roads, thus grading the total scores on the points given,” said Pranjali Deshpande, urban planner and mentor for the survey.