Right of Way: The right to walk safely requires more than urban design standards for curbed sidewalks

A recent Supreme Court ruling recognizing walking on marked footpaths as a fundamental right has urban planners celebrating the shrinking of well-designed streets nationwide. As India pursues Viksit Bharat, the judgment offers a real opportunity to reshape streets that have long defied the Western sense of urban order espoused by our planning norms.

Prevailing urban design standards in India already institutionalize space for safe sidewalks on right-of-way streets. Yet the human cost of dangerous streets remains high – a government of India report shows that the top 10 cities accounted for 46.34% of road deaths in 2024 out of all 50 million-plus cities, with pedestrians accounting for 20.6%. Delhi recorded the highest toll, followed by Bengaluru and Jaipur.

So why has the implementation of the National Safe Streets Standards remained ineffective and what can we do about it? Indian cities are likely to resist any centralized codes for safe street and sidewalk design. At the same time, most municipal authorities are unable to adapt to the challenge. Given this gap between central standards and local reality, the court’s ruling offers an opportunity to reevaluate standards that only partially match the cities they were meant to serve.

Three structural problems deserve attention.

The first relates to the mismatch between existing norms and India’s diverse urban context. The national guidelines i.e. IRC-103-2012 Indian Roads Congress and URDPFI guidelines have been formulated to promote ‘healthy streets’ which prioritize walking, cycling, universal accessibility and road safety.

All standards prescribe sidewalks up to 4 meters wide, with a non-negotiable minimum of 1.8 meters, even in resource-poor areas. However, not all streets in Indian cities can accommodate this well-intentioned standard. Such measures may suit planned arterials, but in older precincts like Chickpete, the loosely connected networks of suburban Hyderabad, or the unplanned housing estates of suburban Mumbai, where narrow lanes and intensive street vending leave little room for standardized pavement widths, they prove highly dysfunctional. The result is often a paradox: oversized footpaths on main thoroughfares with low pedestrian volumes and impossible minimum width mandates in the most populated areas of the city.

The second issue is scale and material specification. Over 4,500 Indian cities allocate up to 25% of their urban land to roads, most of which are local streets where pedestrian traffic predominates. Building sidewalks in this network to national specifications with concrete and standardized urban furniture is far beyond the administrative and financial capacity of most city authorities, leaving safe sidewalks unimplemented while exacerbating urban heat islands.

A third problem is weak institutional ownership. Vehicle registration, traffic enforcement, street design, construction and maintenance all fall under different jurisdictions. Devolution of powers from the state to local authorities is essential so that they become stewards of the coordination, design and maintenance of safe trails.

Elected and unelected officials must be equipped to organize stakeholders with diverse needs and co-design streets with residents at the ward level. Case law must also translate into municipal incentives that drive ward-level action and political accountability.

If imitating Western standards is impractical, what options do we have? The redesign of Ajmal Khan Road in Delhi’s Karol Bagh offers a notable precedent: rather than large-scale construction, UTTIPEC and DDA designers used painted lane demarcations, greenery to calm traffic and modest street furniture at a fraction of the ₹7-10 million per kilometer cost of a norm-compliant construction. Expanding this approach requires a change in mindset: designing and maintaining collectively and building contextually and with less rather than more.

For street design to support inclusive communities, we need clear goals for walkable cities and revised standards for different urban contexts, including adapted sidewalks and innovations in recycled sustainable materials. The court’s decision on joint management of trails by ULBs, development authorities and panchayats requires ratification to mandate ULBs as primary managers.

The pursuit of Viksit Bharat requires reframing our guidelines for broader social outcomes, where we think of streets and sidewalks as urban design projects and instead see them as processes for building strong communities.

(Champaka Rajagopal, PhD, is a Fellow at the Center for Policy Research, Delhi)

Published – 12 Jul 2026 06:01 IST