SPATIAL CONFLICT BETWEEN STREET VENDORS AND PEDESTRIANS: A STUDY OF KOLKATA STREET MARKETS

Abstract

Walk down any busy market street in India and you will notice the same problem vendors and pedestrians are constantly bumping into each other. In Kolkata, where most people travel on foot or by public transport, this is more than just an annoyance. It is a daily safety risk. This study looked at two busy market areas in Kolkata: Gariahat Market and New Market. At both places, vendors have taken over most of the footpath, leaving pedestrians with almost no space to walk. A seven-hour survey on a regular weekday found that nearly 4 in every 10 pedestrians were forced to walk on the road alongside moving vehicles. At the worst spot-a narrow lane behind New Market on Bertram Street-more than 6 in 10 pedestrians were on the road at every hour of the day. The study also found that fixed stalls cause the most consistent problems, narrow streets suffer far more than wider ones, and the conflict peaks between 5 PM and 6 PM across all four survey spots. Importantly, this thesis does not say vendors should be removed. They are on the street because their customers are there, and because the Street Vendors Act 2014 gives them the legal right to be there. The real problem is simpler: no one has ever drawn a clear line on the footpath to say which part belongs to vendors and which part belongs to pedestrians. No vending zones have been marked. No vendor certificates have been given out. The Town Vending Committee-the body the law created to handle all of this-exists on paper but does nothing in practice. The solution proposed in this thesis is called Vending Zone Demarcation with Typology-Based Spatial Allocation. In plain terms: draw a line, give one side to vendors and the other to walkers, and use the legal tools that already exist under the Street Vendors Act 2014. Specific plans are laid out for all four problem spots, with clear zone sizes and vendor rules. No new government body needs to be created to make this work. If put into action, the proposal is expected to bring road overflow below 20% at three of the four spots, and below 25% at Bertram Street after a one-way traffic change. The main finding is simple: this conflict is not unavoidable. It happened because the right tools were never used. The fix is not eviction-it is organisation.