Analysis / Reports

The “walkmobile” was invented by Hermann Knoflacher, Professor at the Institute of Transportation at Vienna University of Technology. It is a simple frame made of wood and has the size of a car. A belt makes it easy to walk around with this frame. The idea of the “walkmobile” is to show how much space a car needs and how much city space we are willing to cut from public space and give it away to the group of car drivers. This results in streets where the whole width is reserved for cars and motorbikes, leaving almost no space to pedestrians - as seen on many streets in Pune. If all the pedestrians would walk around with a “walkmobile” occupying the same space as a car, our footpaths will be very fast as congested as streets are today.

Dr. Adhiraj Joglekar conducted an online survey to collect views and experiences of users with regards to the JM-FC one way scheme. The results of the first 136 respondents of the survey between 12th and 15th September 09 are summarized below. We thank Dr. Joglekar for granting us permission to use data from his survey and publish the results on our website.

It is apparent from this survey that though the scheme has increased speeds of travel, it has compromised safety of both vehicle travellers and pedestrians and cyclists, while increasing commuting distances and making it inconvenient to bus users.

The Pune chapter of Net Impact, an international nonprofit organization working to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world, recently finished an exhaustive survey of the traffic conditions at Hinjewadi, the large software technology park close to Pune. Parisar was also a partner in the survey and provided inputs into the survey design and analysis of the findings.

In June 2009, Parisar undertook a survey of cyclists in Pune with the help of Prof. Shruti Tambe of the Sociology Department of the Pune University, and her students. From Parisar's side Ranjit Gadgil was responsible for driving the project. The idea was to understand the demographic profile of cyclists in Pune, and their real needs and requirements. This survey was only a pilot survey with a small sample size of about 100 cyclists. But it still resulted in valuable insights about cycling in Pune and attitude towards cyclists. Click on the image to the left to download the full report (900KB).