One unfortunate reality of our city planning is the appalling neglect of pedestrians. They get what is left of the road and less than 10% of the city roads has proper,walkable footpaths. And if there is one, rogue two-wheeler drivers use it with impunity putting pedestrians at risk. Sky-walks in the core city are put up for advertisers and underground subways are unsafe. Large arterial roads like the ORR and the Airport road which need sky walks do not have them. All in all, an unsafe and inconvenient mess from a pedestrian view point.
The solution. Place pedestrians at the heart of road planning. Footpaths must be at least 1.5 metres wide and Pedestrians must cross at grade on all roads less than 40 metres, by providing traffic calming signals. This is needed on one-way roads too. For major arterial roads, particularly ORR and beyond, provide skywalks based on pedestrian traffic intensity. And cancel the licence of any 2-wheeler ‘criminal at large’ driving on footpaths.
The city is currently enamoured with cement roads for our beloved motor vehicles. Our road hierarchy needs to be inverted – it must be Pedestrians first followed by Cyclists, Public transport and finally Motor vehicles. Unless this is done, doomsday on our roads in terms of safety and being stuck in grid locked traffic is inevitable. We need an institutional mechanism in the form of a Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) to help realise our priorities. The system would do well to embrace pedestrians. One would think they are the major vote bank!
– V. Ravichandar, Civic Evangelist
