Coimbatore’s VKK Menon Road gets pedestrian-friendly makeover

As my scooter enters VKK Menon Road’s school zone, I instinctively slow down. Not because of traffic — it is 10am and the children are all indoors — but because of the tactical circular and wave-like patterns on the road. It calms the senses and I am more alert to my surroundings. The project, piloted by the Coimbatore Corporation, has been done with the support of technical thinktank, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.

Earlier this month, a 200-metre stretch of the road on either side of which are two schools — the Corporation Higher Secondary School and Corporation Elementary School, Siddhapudur — was given a tactical makeover. The road has been painted with recurrent blue, pink and red patterns with clear markers to indicate that it is a school zone, also making it pedestrian friendly. There are delineators to earmark spaces for walking as well as parking.

Students from the Corporation Higher Secondary School, Siddhapudur
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

What is tactical urban design? According to Aswathy Dilip, managing director, ITDP India, it is done to “transform spaces in a very quick timeline, using a smaller budget to show what is possible before a permanent infrastructure is actually done, in order to build support, both from the Government stakeholders as well as citizen groups”.

She says that this idea grew in popularity across the world during the COVID pandemic. “There was no vehicular movement during the time. And so, cities had to bring in cycle tracks quickly. They had to open up streets as public spaces with enough space for people to walk,” she says, adding that cities like Milan created numerous public spaces using tactical urbanism.

There has always been an interest in redesigning Coimbatore’s streets. Aswathy points out that sometime around 2016, the city had adopted a street design policy. “There was an interest to redesign multiple streets, including DB Road, TV Swamy Road, Race Course Road, about six other streets,” she says. It is only now that things have fallen in place.

Children walk to school safely
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

Sanchana S, senior associate, ITDP India, who was in Coimbatore for the project, says that the stretch was painted over three days. She recalls how children from the two schools were curious about what was going on. “This gave us an opportunity to interact and also get some student volunteers from the schools to come and paint,” she says, adding: “Usually, the intention of such a pop-up project is also to make it as participatory as possible; to engage the ground users to be a part of the process.” For they are the ones who will be using the road and need to “understand how to use it effectively”.

Sanchana talks about how during interactions with the school principals and teachers, they learned about the anti-social activities that used to take place by this roadside. Combined with rampant parking, it prevented children from walking peacefully to school. “The streets were usually littered and abused by people at night, especially those who were under the influence of alcohol,” she notes.

Painting in progress
| Photo Credit:
Special arrangement

Once the design intervention came about, Sanchana says that things changed. Firstly, they were able to remove parked vehicles. “That brought a sense of relief for both schools,” she says. “Secondly, we had cleared up space for children to walk along the sides of the road, removed the garbage that was lying around.” Sanchana says that the headmistress of the elementary school told them that she was relieved that children can now use the road safely.

The project is set to be taken to other parts of the city as well, with a plan to redesign roads at 10 other locations. “The sites have been chosen such that it is not just concentrated in one particular neighbourhood of the city or one zone. We want to take it to different geographical areas, so these sites are almost equally distributed among the five zones in Coimbatore,” she explains.

The team hopes that ultimately, such design interventions bring about a change in how roads are perceived. The very purpose of the exercise, Sanchana explains, is to “understand and study the impact that comes out of the intervention. To see how much space we’re able to reclaim for children who are walking to schools; to identify how much vehicular speed we’re able to reduce,” she says. People too learn to use these roads as they are meant to be used. “We are hoping for behavioural changes in pedestrians too. For instance, they get to know that one can cross the street only at designated points.”

Published – March 30, 2026 01:10 pm IST