Indian cities need to move beyond building more roads. They need better road networks

The Supreme Court’s recognition in June of walking as a fundamental right is a moment for Indian cities to rethink the way we look at our roads and the purpose they serve.

The conversation around urban roads is largely dominated by familiar questions: how congested are they? Do we need to widen them? Won’t a new flyover ease bottlenecks?

However, congestion is not just a problem of insufficient road width. It also arises due to inadequate road networks.

A city does not function through a handful of wider roads. It functions through a hierarchy of roads – arterial roads carrying longer-distance traffic, primary and secondary roads distributing this traffic, and local streets providing access to individual properties.

Each layer of this hierarchy has a critical role to play, and its physical design should complement that role.

When the design of a road does not align with its intended role, the overall network becomes less efficient. Similarly, when connections between different levels of the hierarchy are missing, trips are forced onto a few major corridors, adding to existing traffic and increasing pressure on the network.

While cities do need to build road infrastructure, these efforts should translate to a better connected and more efficient road networks.

This requires a shift from project-by-project...

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