Top News

From green ambulance corridors to pink gender-safe routes, India’s colour-coded mobility system is reshaping how cities prioritise movement amid rising congestion

Lungi Ngidi was up for an unlikely feat of speed in Delhi recently, just not as a result of any heroics with the ball at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, where he was playing an IPL match. The South African cricketer navigated a 9-kilometre stretch in the national capital during rush hours in all of 11 minutes. Quite remarkable for a route where threading through a torrent of humanity on wheels, even on the best of days, can leave one poorer by 30–45 minutes and truckloads of sanity.

Except that Ngidi — hit hard on the head while attempting a catch just minutes earlier — was in an ambulance on his way to BLK-Max Hospital, and it was the Delhi Police holding back bumper-to-bumper traffic that ensured he received timely medical help. Although it was an exploit the Delhi Capitals pacer, despite being no stranger to speed, would hardly want to remember, it marked yet another success of a “green corridor” — a concept that has come to demonstrate a level of empathy quite rare in our indifferent cities.

Mosaic in grey

Thanks to green corridors — where traffic police temporarily turn busy roads into signal-free expressways for ambulances — harvested organs travel faster than commuters, quite ironically on the very roads that claim hundreds of lives every day without a ripple. Notably, Mumbai’s preplanned, highly coordinated green corridors are said to have improved the success rates of organ transplants by reducing travel time from various hospitals to the airport to under 20 minutes.