The urban street design guidelines project for the city is being given the final touches presently. It will be finalised next month after suggestions from the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) have been duly incorporated.
However, choosing not to wait till next month, the civic body’s Road department has already decided to go ahead and start implementing some of those guidelines in their upcoming road development projects. These guidelines have laid down a proper set of parameters for the ongoing road projects, which the department shall consider even as four architects specifically appointed by the civic body for the purpose, design vital roads and junctions in the city.
Work on framing these guidelines began a year ago, when PMC engaged city-based firm Architecture and gave them the responsibility. The purpose of these guidelines is to enable street designers, contractors, consultants and decision-makers to understand the ideal way of designing the city streets.
The guidelines will provide recommendations on each element of street design and also provide ideal cross-sections, which can be referred to, while undertaking the construction and redevelopment of any city street.
Additional city engineer (Roads), said that the draft has almost been finalised. They are just waiting for the formal approval from the PMC technical committee to come through.
Meanwhile, in order to implement these guidelines, they recently called for a meeting of all engineers in the Road department. They have even gone ahead and circulated important factors such as the width of footpaths, tree location, precautions for intersections etc, that are to be kept in mind while designing road plans.
They have prepared the draft after conducting extensive studies. For the purpose, they studied the social environment and development of the city in the past 15 years. They called for suggestions from all stakeholders like traffic police, PMPML and MSEDCL among others.
Additionally, they carried out an online survey and asked the general public for their views on factors that would likely improve road safety and promote comfortable driving conditions. They received responses from around 8,000 people which have been duly considered while framing these guidelines.
Although guidelines specified by the Indian Road Congress (IRC) already exist for the purpose of road development, they decided to prepare customised guidelines, after considering the city requirements in detail, said transport planner and in-charge of the project.
Any street has a number of co-existing elements, which ensure their overall good performance. In the guidelines that have been prepared for PMC’s purpose, these elements have been classified into three main components — mobility and accessibility, safety and comfort, environment and ecology.
These three components together encompass all combining factors such as width of the road, foot path, carriage way to elements like trees, street lights, public toilet etc.
Factors that were considered while framing the guidelines:
• Mobility and Accessibility — Cycle track, carriage way, footpath, flyovers, junctions
• Safety and Comfort — Street crossings, street lights, signals, medians, refuge islands etc.
• Environment and Ecology — Trees, storm water drains, utilities, garbage containers, public toilets
