The great Indian flip: People on roads, bikes on footpaths
Indian pedestrians are increasingly at risk as delivery riders and two-wheelers use footpaths to bypass traffic congestion. This shift, driven by the pressure of the app-based delivery economy, has effectively displaced vulnerable groups like the elderly and children from safe walking spaces.
Why it matters
It highlights the growing conflict between the convenience of the gig economy and the fundamental right to safe urban infrastructure in rapidly developing nations.
Walking, once the safest way to get around a city, has quietly become a risk for millions of Indians. The danger is no longer from speeding cars or reckless drivers alone, but from the very footpaths that are meant to keep pedestrians away from traffic. Scooters, motorcycles and delivery riders are taking over pavements across Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai as informal traffic lanes, displacing the elderly, children and the disabled from spaces that were initially constructed for their protection.A footpath is not a safe placeFootpaths had a simple purpose — to separate slow-moving pedestrians from fast, heavier traffic. That divide has already disappeared in Indian cities. Delivery riders zip along pavements, two-wheelers dart through pedestrian crossings to beat the red lights and electric scooters glide up from behind almost soundlessly, leaving walkers no time to react. It is common to see this now.
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