Vishveshwarapuram
The Food Street or Thindi Beedhi as we locals call it should be made into a pedestrian only street beyond 7pm. Atleast on weekends. This would encourage the shops to put out tables and chairs and make it quite like the Chinatown food streets around the world and make it safer for everyone there.
Certainly a great idea! The fact that New York’s Broadway, one of the most famous streets in the world, succeeded in putting the traffic away proves that such a conversion into a pedestrian could be surely realized in other places as well, in particular in the Vishveshwarapuram Food Street.
As you pointed out, if shop-owners put their chairs and desks outside, no matter for the whole day or only a part of it, it would invite everybody to come along and the street would become an important meeting point in the city. The resulting social control will lead to a safer place. Moreover, conversion of the Vishveshwarapuram into a pedestrian street would also benefit the shop-owners.
In the beginning “pedestrialisation” of the street could be tested only on weekends, and in case of the success expansion to the week days can be made possible. How do you think?
That is exactly what I had in mind! A street that already receives so many footfalls during the evening would surely benefit from something like this. And New York’s Broadway is a standing example for something like this, though on a much larger scale of course.
Also, apart from just looking at it from a ‘weekday-weekend’ point of view, another is to look at it from a temporal point. Life starts on this street only around 3pm once the food stalls open up and goes up till 12am-1am. So regulations could also be made based on this (Ex: Pondicherry’s seaside promenade that closes everyday from 6am to 6pm) so that it doesn’t interfere with vehicular commuters to the school and temples around the street in the morning.
One more thing I would like to add is that there are two conservancy lanes that branch out from the Food Street. Right now access is restricted by iron gates and the food stall cooks use it for preparing their meals (chopping vegetables etc).
If redeveloped like the laneways of Sydney, Melbourne, Vancouver etc, they could act as spaces where the tables and chairs could be placed where people could sit down and eat.
Ample lighting could also be provided to promote safety.