Planning with focus on pedestrians and sustainable transport in Pune, India

Abstract: The core city in Pune is highly congested, and the number of motorised vehicles on the street is increasing rapidly in the whole city. This creates problems like air pollution, high noise levels, long travelling times and an unpleasant urban environment etc. The thesis presents some solutions for these problems, based on sustainable transport principles, methods for creating a pleasant walking environment and best practice examples. The planning proposal is divided into a concept plan for the whole core city, as well as a detailed planning proposal for a pedestrian street on a part of Laxmi Road - one of Pune’s most well-known streets. Different aspects of the core city area and Laxmi Road have been mapped thoroughly and a traffic count, function analysis, a target point analysis and a Lynch analysis have been performed. Focus is to improve conditions for pedestrians. To achieve this it is important to limit the motorised traffic. An origin- destination survey performed on Laxmi Road displayed that over 40% of the traffic on the street in peak-hour is through traffic. The proposal is therefore to limit through traffic and improve the pedestrian environment. This thesis evaluates and discusses this proposal; including an analysis of the improvements to the air quality, the effect on different groups of people, and the necessary elements for the project to succeed.