The Church Street pedestrianisation project has received the Union government's recognition with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) giving a running trophy to the state government apart from other awards.
The project in which the Directorate of Urban Land Transport, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Energy Systems Catapult, Urban Morph others collaborated, was successful in proving the benefits of pedestrian-first approach in selected urban streets.
The "Clean Air Street - Church Street First" was been conferred with the “Commendation Award in Urban Transport” under the category “Running trophy for the state/UT, which has Implemented Best Urban Transport Projects during the previous year".
Additionally, IISc professor Ashish Verma and Research Scholar Hemanthini Allirani received the 'Best Research Paper Award (1st Prize)' for a paper titled 'Impact Assessment of Pedestrianising an Urban Street in Terms of Quality of Life' in the 12th Research Symposium of Urban transport, as part of 14th Urban Mobility Conference 2021 organised by MoHUA and Institute of Urban Transport (IUT), India.
"The awards make it a very unique recognition for our Lab and Church Street First project, since the Commendation award focuses on the societal impact and practice relevance and the best paper award focuses on the research impact and quality. As we know well, research is usually valued high on research impact or on societal impact but seldom on both," Verma said.
He said the project provides an excellent example and template of how a university or research lab can collaborate with government and non-government organisations on a project of high societal importance to provide very good scientific evidence-based impact assessment and decision support for the governments.
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