Coimbatore Corporation has tasked five of its engineers with identifying roads for developing non-motorised transport (NMT) corridors.
Assistant engineers R. Muthukumar (North Zone), R. Ezhil (East Zone), S.R. Savitha (South Zone), R. Uthaman (West Zone) and R. Sakthivel (Central Zone) would identify roads where the Corporation could develop pedestrian pathways, bicycling tracks and improve roads for easy vehicle movement, said sources familiar with the development.
The Corporation had asked the engineers to identify the first road in their respective zone in the next one-and-a-half months and more roads thereafter.
It had also tasked them with developing roads to accommodate pedestrian pathways and bicycle lanes as and when it rebuilt roads.
The Corporation launched the NMT project a few days ago in association with the German agency GIZ under the Smart Cities Mission.
The German agency had trained the five engineers in December 2020-January 2021 with a 70-hour orientation programme on the NMT.
The five engineers would in turn train their colleagues so that every engineer had the requisite skill sets to identify and develop roads.
The reason that the GIZ, through the Corporation, gave the e-bicycles to the engineers was that the engineers by cycling on roads they wanted to identify before selection would understand the problems first hand.
It was better if the Corporation engineers, who would implement the NMT project, understood the problems than the GIZ or any other agency studying roads on their behalf to suggest those to the Corporation, the sources further said while explaining the need for giving the five e-bicycles.
The GIZ had conducted a survey a few years ago and identified 300-km roads in the city with the potential to be developed as NMT corridors.