BENGALURU: TenderSure roads, which are being built across Bengaluru with pedestrian-centric architecture and design , have now become a national and global example. with one international organization vying to emulate in other cities.

The Global Designing Cities Initiative of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), a New York-based advocacy group on urban mobility, has included TenderSure in its Global Urban Streets Guide.

“...TenderSure is a global example now and St. Marks Road is our case study. Data analysis of the road shows a 250% increase in volume of pedestrians, while wait time at crossings (for pedestrians) has reduced by three minutes; it takes only 12 seconds now. It is a model that will definitely work for urban streets in Bengaluru,” said Abhimanyu Prakash, programme manager of Global Designing Cities Initiative.

St. Marks Road is the only road listed in the Global Urban Streets Guide’s model of neighbourhood streets from India. The guide has been endorsed by 15 organizations and 29 cities, including London, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Addis Ababa and Toronto as a new standard for transforming streets to prioritize safety, pedestrians, transit and sustainable mobility.

It will be a globally accessible free-to-download document that urban planners, designers and transportation practitioners in cities around the world can implement.

NACTO is currently working on solutions for urban street designing in Mumbai under the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative of Global Road Safety.

The Global Urban Streets Guide is not the only laurel TenderSure has garnered. Branded as the best practice by Niti Aayog, the model will now be emulated in multiple Indian cities and towns.

Among cities and towns willing to implement this are Hubballi-Dharwad, Chennai, Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur and Rajasthan’s Sawai Madhopur.

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.”

“An urban road is the most prolific physical infrastructure with the highest domino impact, improving other key civic networks, including drainage, sewage, water, power and telecom,” she added.

In Bengaluru, Jana Group started the project on 12 roads of which St. Marks Road and Vittal Mallya Road were the first ones. The others include Cunningham Road, Museum Road, Commissariat Road, Residency Road, Nrupathunga Road, KG Road and Modi Hospital Road. The government has subsequently announced 50 more roads in the city to be transformed as per TenderSure specifications.

