Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru

Bengaluru, Jun 25: In what may be regarded as a pat on the back of the Karnataka government, Bengaluru roads designed under the TenderSURE (Specification for Urban Roads Execution) project have been listed in the Global Urban Streets guide.

The guide is prepared by Global Designing Cities Initiative of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), a New York-based advocacy group on urban mobility.

According to Abhimanyu Prakash, programme manager of Global Designing Cities Initiative, St Mark’s road developed under the TenderSURE project was taken up as a case study. The data revealed that there was a 250 percent increase in the volume of pedestrians and the crossing time had reduced by three minutes. St Mark’s road was the only street in India to be listed in the Global Urban Streets guide, which is endorsed by 15 organizations and 29 cities as a new standard for transforming streets to prioritize safety, pedestrians, transit and sustainable mobility.

TenderSURE project has also been branded as the best practice by The National Institution for Transforming India, also called NITI Aayog. Roads under the TenderSURE guidelines may soon be implemented in Hubballi-Dharwad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Rajasthan's Sawai Madhopur.

In an interview to a newspaper, Swati Ramanathan, chairwoman of Jana Group and the brain behind the project, said: "Such detailed design and construction drawings have been issued for a municipal project for the first time. Many cities are now willing to implement this and I hope that over the next decade, we see dramatic improvement of our city roads and footpaths."

In Bengaluru, St Mark’s Road, Cunningham Road, Vittal Mallya Hospital Road, Richmond Road, Residency Road, Commissariat Road, Museum Road, Nrupatunga Road and Kempegowda Road have already been developed and 50 more roads have been announced by the government to be urbanized as per Tender Sure specifications.

Tender Sure initiative began with the understanding that the development of urban roads has been haphazard, without proper guidelines and with multiple civic agencies working multiple times separately on a single road. The road standards mandate the integration of networked services such as water, sewage, power, OFC, gas and storm water drains under the road. The design prioritises the comfort and safety of pedestrians and cyclists as well as understands the needs of street hawkers.