Status Note on Pedestrian Accessibility in Vadodara

1. Key figures

2. Legal and policy framework

2.1 The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016

The RPwD Act makes accessibility a legal duty rather than a favour. Section 40 asks the Central Government to set accessibility standards for the physical environment and transport. Section 41 requires steps to make transport, including bus stops and terminals, accessible. Section 44 says no building plan should be approved unless it follows those standards. Sections 45 and 46 set time limits for making existing public buildings and services accessible.

2.2 Rajive Raturi v. Union of India (8 November 2024)

The Supreme Court held that Rule 15 of the RPwD Rules, 2017 was inconsistent with the Act because it set out guidelines rather than enforceable, non-negotiable standards. It directed the Union Government to frame mandatory accessibility rules within three months, while progressive compliance with the existing rules continued in the meantime.

2.3 National guidelines

• Harmonised Guidelines and Standards for Universal Accessibility in India (2021), Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs: design guidance for buildings and public spaces, including footpaths, kerb ramps and tactile paving.
• IRC:103-2022, Guidelines for Pedestrian Facilities, Indian Roads Congress: the road-engineering standard for footpaths and crossings.
• Accessible India Campaign (Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan), launched in December 2015, with targets for accessible buildings, transport and information.

2.4 National transport context

Sangyan's Status Note on Accessibility in Public Road Transport of India (May 2025), based on information from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways under the RTI Act, reports that as of March 2025, 35.08% of buses operated by 61 State Transport Undertakings were accessible, and 10,873 were fully wheelchair-accessible. It lists the bus-design rules behind this (GSR 159(E), GSR 959(E), AIS:153 and AIS:052) and the Accessibility Guidelines for Bus Terminals and Bus Stops (2022).

3. Field survey findings

Om Dorkar photographed and recorded 11 barriers in Vadodara. Each record has a barrier type and a severity, which are the surveyor's judgement. In four records the photo shows the setting but not the barrier itself, and the map says so. Kerb heights and slopes were not measured.

Summary by type

Two of the four high-severity barriers are at transport entrances: the back of Vadodara Junction railway station and the central bus station. In three records (GJ SH 11 in Alkapuri, Dandia Bazaar Road and the Gorwa road) there was no footpath at all, so pedestrians must walk on the carriageway.

4. AI street scan findings

The map runs a weekly scan of every openly licensed Mapillary street photo inside the Vadodara box (22.24–22.40 N, 73.10–73.27 E). Mapillary's own computer vision labels each photo. A simple, published rule then marks a daylight photo of a road green if a footpath is detected, red if it is a built-up street with no footpath detected, and grey if it is an open road. Of 721 photos, 390 could not be judged (night, no road, or unclear).

• Snapped onto OpenStreetMap roads, the scan covers about 3.3 km of road: 1.5 km with a footpath detected, 1.6 km of built-up street with none, and 0.2 km of open road.
• The scan saw 13 zebra crossings but only 1 kerb cut. Kerb ramps are small and often missed by the detector, so this does not prove they are absent. It does mark 13 crossings worth checking on foot.
• The imagery is old in places: 383 of the 721 photos (53%) date from 2014–2015, 134 from 2022 and 201 from 2025. Streets may have changed since.
• A second, learning detector built for this project reaches a cross-validated accuracy of 74.7% on whether a footpath is present (precision 71.7%, recall 80.3%). In a manual spot check of 12 "no footpath" results, 8 were clearly right and 4 unclear.

5. Gaps in open map data

Navigation apps and planners often rely on OpenStreetMap. For Vadodara it records almost nothing about accessibility:

• Of about 26,700 road segments, only 8 say whether there is a footpath.
• Among 166 mapped elements checked in the whole city box there are 62 wheelchair tags, 1 tactile_paving tag and no kerb tags (25 October 2026).
• In the original core study area (Alkapuri, Sayaji Baug and the station), 26 footways were mapped and none carried kerb, wheelchair or tactile_paving tags (18 October 2026).

A person planning a route in a wheelchair therefore cannot learn from open data whether a street has a usable footpath or a kerb ramp. Filling this gap is one of the cheapest improvements available.

6. Limits of this note

• It is a remote audit with a small field survey, not a systematic walk of the city. It gives no citywide percentage of accessible footpaths.
• No kerb heights, slopes or widths were measured.
• No one who uses a wheelchair, pram or cane has yet reviewed the findings.
• AI results are machine estimates and are labelled as such on the map. The street imagery is uneven: most of it covers highways and the north and east of the city, and much of it is old.
• Google Maps and Street View imagery was not used, because its terms forbid copying or analysing it.

7. Recommendations

1. Fix the transport entrances first. The railway authorities should add a ramp at the back entrance of Vadodara Junction, and the bus station operator should add a kerb ramp on the station footpath. These are the places where an accessible bus or train is lost if the entrance is not.
2. Check the 13 detected zebra crossings for kerb ramps and add ramps where they are missing, following IRC:103-2022 and the 2021 Harmonised Guidelines.
3. Reconnect the Sayaji Baug ramps on Vinoba Bhave Road to the footpath, and repair the broken ramp tiles at the zoo.
4. Build continuous footpaths on roads where people now walk on the carriageway, starting with GJ SH 11 in Alkapuri, Dandia Bazaar Road and the Gorwa road in this survey.
5. Publish accessibility data. The Vadodara Municipal Corporation could publish which streets, crossings and public buildings have been audited under the RPwD Act. A Right to Information request is the natural next step if this is not public.
6. Map what exists. Residents and mappers can add sidewalk, kerb and tactile_paving tags to OpenStreetMap so that route-planning tools can use them.
7. Involve disabled people in every audit, including the next round of this one.

Next steps for this project

• Invite residents to confirm or reject each AI result on the map's labelling page, so the detector learns from real local judgement.
• Grow the field survey with photos from volunteers across the city.
• Share this note with the city and with local disability groups, and log any reply.
• Update the note as the weekly scan and the survey grow.

8. References and data

1. Vadodara Access Map: live map, code and data, including method and limits, data sources and checked facts and detector metrics.
2. Sangyan, Status Note on Accessibility in Public Road Transport of India (May 2025): Medium. Related: Factsheet: Accessible India Campaign (May 2024) and Status Note for Accessibility in Public Transport of India (March 2025).
3. Supreme Court of India, Rajive Raturi v. Union of India, judgment of 8 November 2024: judgment (PDF); summary in SCC Online.
4. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, Sections 40, 41, 44, 45 and 46.
5. Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Harmonised Guidelines and Standards for Universal Accessibility in India (2021).
6. Indian Roads Congress, IRC:103-2022 Guidelines for Pedestrian Facilities.
7. AFP, "India's choked pavements fail pedestrians" (July 2026), via Cambodianess.
8. Street imagery: Mapillary contributors, CC-BY-SA 4.0. Map data: © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.