You step out of a Metro station in Hyderabad and set off on a routine one-kilometre walk. Within minutes, the footpath disappears beneath a succession of obstacles. Parked SUVs block the way and broken pavement demands careful footing while poles, cable wires, signboards and construction material crowd the route. At several points, pedestrians are left choosing between negotiating the clutter and stepping into road traffic.

On the stretch between the Jubilee Hills Checkpost Metro Station and the entrance of KBR National Park, a simple walk often becomes an exercise in vigilance.

The sidewalk is repeatedly interrupted by metro structures, utility infrastructure, commercial encroachments and construction debris. Near the junction, a maze of poles, cables and scaffolding leaves little room to pass. Across the road, barricades, food trucks, a public toilet, bus shelters, trees and other obstacles break up the pathway before it abruptly ends near the park entrance. Nearby, sections of demolished pavement are being cleared to create additional road space for a flyover intended to ease congestion.

Such is the state of what is considered one of Hyderabad’s better footpaths, a reality that sits uneasily with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling recognising the ‘Right to Walk’ as a fundamental right. The apex court held that freedom to walk on demarcated and well maintained footpaths takes precedence over motorised vehicles. Walking safely and carefree along footpaths without danger lurking at every turn, Justice P.S. Narasimha observed, is among the most basic of rights and inextricably connected to life itself.

The court also suggested policy measures, including the establishment of a regulatory body with a legal and statutory framework to protect the right to walk.

For Telangana government to implement the judgment in letter and spirit, it may have to fundamentally rethink its urban mobility priorities and place pedestrian infrastructure at the centre of road development planning.

No footpaths in power corridors

As things stand, footpaths and pedestrian facilities feature nowhere among the city’s major infrastructure initiatives. Even roads surrounding Hyderabad’s legislative and administrative hubs remain devoid of basic pedestrian amenities, putting hundreds of lives at risk every day.

Major junctions close to the State’s legislative and administrative hubs in the city are devoid of footpaths and other pedestrian facilities, putting hundreds of lives at risk.

A walk from the Lakdikapul Metro Station to Aranya Bhavan in Saifabad offers another example. Along a stretch that passes the police headquarters and the State Legislative Assembly, pedestrians are forced to navigate a narrow, stinking space between roaring traffic and the elevated grounds of Ravindra Bharathi, the State’s cultural centre, for about 50 metres. Across the junction, the footpath next to the Assembly remains closed in the name of VVIP security. Further ahead, a popular restaurant has effectively converted the sidewalk into a two-wheeler parking area through a makeshift ramp.

“I walk well over two kilometres every day, and less than 20% of the distance has usable footpaths. For most part, roads don’t have anything that resembles a footpath. Then you have footpaths which exist in name only, but the surface is broken down and dangerous,” says Natasha Ramarathnam, a citizen-activist from the city.

“There are other footpaths which are completely encroached by stalls and showrooms. Wherever a new construction is coming up, it encroaches a foot into the footpath. So, basically when Supreme Court talks about the right to walk on pavements, it is the biggest joke here, because there are literally no pavements in Hyderabad,” she points out, adding that Kolkata and Mumbai, where she resided earlier, were comparatively more walkable.

Miles of roads, missing walkways

The problem is not confined to a few stretches. Within the limits of the erstwhile Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), the city had more than 800 kilometres of four-plus lane roads that should have had pedestrian walkways on both sides. For a requirement of roughly 1,600 kilometres of footpaths, only about 430 kilometres existed, many too narrow or encroached to be of practical use. Though the government launched an initiative in 2019 to build footpaths along major roads, the effort fell far too short.

Since then, the city has expanded up to the Outer Ring Road (ORR) and the civic body has been trifurcated. Hyderabad now has 886 km of four-lane roads, 242 km of six-lane roads and 65 km of eight-lane roads, all of which require well designed and well maintained pedestrian infrastructure.

Indian Road Congress standards mandate safe, continuous and accessible footpaths on roads where vehicle speeds exceed 15 kmph. The guidelines envisage that footpath width should be planned in three different zones: pedestrian or walking zone, frontage or dead zone, and multi-utility zone, with footpaths wide enough to accommodate pedestrians, street furniture, bus stops, trees, vendors and other public amenities. Such standards, however, remain far removed from the reality on most city roads.

The pedestrian zone alone should be at least two metres (six feet) wide to allow two wheelchairs to pass comfortably. On commercial roads, accommodating all these elements would require footpaths between 5 and 7.5 metres (16 to 24 feet) wide which is equivalent to a two-lane road, and a difficult proposition in a city where road space comes at a premium.

Urban transport specialist Prashanth Bachu rejects the argument that Hyderabad lacks the space for pedestrian infrastructure. Wider footpaths and better public transportation, he says, would reduce traffic congestion rather than worsen it: “We have such wide roads that we can land aeroplanes on them. It is absolutely wrong to say that there is traffic, so we are widening the roads. It is because there is a wide road, there is so much traffic. Bigger the pipe, more the water.”

According to him, constraining road space encourages more people to use public transport, which in turn creates demand for better services and investment on the government’s part.

“The moment you widen the road beyond two lanes in one direction, the possibility of crossing the road becomes negligible. Which means that every person who needs to go across the road, will resort to private transport, such as a bike or a car,” he points out.

In other words, by providing wider roads that are increasingly difficult to cross, cities risk pushing people who might otherwise walk or use public transport towards opting for private vehicles.

The road to more traffic

For much of the past decade, governments have invested heavily in wider carriageways and grade separators, only for the additional road space to be quickly gobbled by a rising number of private vehicles. One example is the P. Janardhan Reddy (PJR) flyover (also known as Shilpa Layout Phase 2 flyover) connecting Kondapur and Gachibowli, which witnessed severe congestion soon after its launch a year ago.

Under the Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP) implemented since 2016, Hyderabad has added 42 flyovers, underpasses and bridges at a cost of more than ₹8,000 crore, with the aim of enabling signal-free travel up to the ORR. Public transport, meanwhile, continued to shrivel.

The total number of vehicles in Greater Hyderabad has increased from about 50 lakh in 2016 to more than 94 lakh by August 2025. A mobility study by Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority found a massive shift away from public transport between 2011 and 2024. While the use of public transport shrank, going from 42% to 25%, the share of cars quadrupled from 4% to 16% during that period.

Road Transport Authority data suggest that the number of two-wheelers has also surged, from 21.45 lakh in 2011 to 65 lakh in 2025. Pedestrians, however, continue to bear a disproportionate share of the consequences. Police records show that 390 pedestrians were killed on the roads of Hyderabad and Cyberabad in 2025, accounting for 35% of the 1,120 road accident fatalities. In recent years, pedestrians have consistently constituted 30% to 40% of all road deaths.

Simultaneous rise in private vehicle use and decline in public transport suggests that many former walkers have shifted to motorised modes of travel. “We have hugely subsidised private travel. Every private company pays car allowance, and provides free car parking. No company pays for a bus pass. It is a clear economic incentive that has driven this mindset,” says Bachu.

To bolster his argument, he points to the economics of mobility: while car prices have not even doubled over the past three decades, public transport costs have risen multifold, making two-wheelers appear both safer and cost-effective.

He also points out that several traffic management measures have inadvertently made life harder for those who travel on foot. Free left turns, closure of junctions to promote U-turns and barricading of medians have made it more difficult to cross the roads, though it was done ostensibly to reduce pedestrian fatalities.

For the safety of walkers, he says, carriageways should be limited to two lanes in each direction and separated by a wide median where people can wait while crossing. Much of the city’s road infrastructure, he argues, is based on unscientific projections and built without adherence to established guidelines.

The way to a walkable city

An alternative approach can be found in Bengaluru’s Tender SURE initiative, which developed street design guidelines in 2011 and implemented pilot projects between 2014 and 2017 featuring footpaths, cycle tracks, organised vending zones, public spaces and utility corridors. The model proved successful enough to be adopted for more roads. The guidelines have also been adopted for the Smart Cities Mission by the Centre.

In Telangana, however, pedestrian infrastructure remains largely absent from layout regulations. The TS-bPASS Act, 2020, mentions footpaths only in relation to underground ducts for utilities and does not explicitly mandate them as a pedestrian safety measure.

Enforcement, meanwhile, is largely limited to periodic drives by the Traffic Police and GHMC to remove encroachments from footpaths.

Officials say this could change with the proposed CURE Act, which includes provisions requiring urban local bodies to create and maintain footpaths, pedestrian crossings, kerb ramps, tactile pathways, street furniture, bus stops and other pedestrian facilities. It also provides for designated pedestrian and non-motorised transport corridors, inclusive infrastructure as per the Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016.