Bloomberg Philanthropies, a US-based charitable foundation has included Mumbai in its list of 20 cities worldwide, which fall in the low and middle-income category, to fund road safety initiatives. As part of this, an MoU was signed between the foundation and the state government for funding worth Rs 100 crore. Also helping the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in making Mumbai a safer place for pedestrians will be the World Resources Institute (WRI), a US-based non-profit organisation.

Madhav Pai, Director, Sustainable Cities, WRI India, in conversation with our sister publication Autocar Professional, said that 40 percent of Mumbai’s citizens walk to work, and a similar percent walk to where they take public transport from.

Speaking on the city’s facilities, Pai said that 70-80 percent of those who die in accidents are pedestrians, which is on what the WRI will be focusing. Road junctions are said to be the biggest issue, and according to Pai with the expertise at his disposal, they plan to redesign road junctions. With the help of Bloomberg Philanthropies, he is confident that within five years’ time, fatalities can be reduced by 20-30 percent.

Commenting on the current design of roads, Pai said, ”If we can ensure that cars move consistently at 20-25kph, we will see a decrease in road fatalities.We need slower roads in the cities by which I mean one should not speed beyond 25-30km. If you reduce a 3.5m road to 2.75, it will lower speed by 15km per hour. There will still be place for buses.”  Coastal roads and elevated roads are not the solution, according to him.

To solve another issue that bothers the city, which is of parking, Pai feels that parking lots are the way forward and thinks they should be reasonably priced. An alternative to fix traffic troubles here is to implement the use of the BRTS (Bus Rapid Transit System), which is popular around the world and in few cities in India.

Mumbai was chosen for the Bloomberg Philanthropies funding to portray the city as an example for the rest of country and the world. A big part of this exercise is to see how cities can learn from each other, explains Pai.