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"Only God can save Bangalore's pedestrians"

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Written By s_yajaman - 23 February, 2009

Bangalore BBMP Citizen Reports walkability Transportation Infrastructure Pedestrian Infrastructure footpaths

So said Dr. Subramanya sometime in Dec 2007.  It seems that pavements are optional in Bangalore.  BBMP can spend 100s of crores on tarring roads, acquiring land for useless road widening (check out the stretch just after Domlur leading to Command Hospital), building flyovers with signals on top of them, etc etc, but has little money to spend on building and maintaining pavements.

Pedestrians are probably losers in the eyes of Bangalore's moribund civic agencies.  Footpaths can be used for parking, for riding on in case of traffic jams, for dumping and burning garbage, etc.  They have to fend for their lives at every step of the way.

If this is the best he can offer, we might as well have leave his post for God to occupy (Vidhana Soudha has a saying - "Government's Work is God's Work and they seem to have left the work to God). 

Here are some pictures that my sister-in-law sent me.  This is not a newly acquired part of Bangalore, but from Cox Town/Frazer Town.

Srivathsa

COMMENTS

More Pictures

Rithesh - 23 February, 2009 - 13:28

From Whitefield Main Road (Notice the innovate use of footpath space - especially in the 5th pic)

[flickr-photo:id=3303731118,size=m] [flickr-photo:id=3302900561,size=m] [flickr-photo:id=3303730906,size=m]
[flickr-photo:id=3303731146,size=m] [flickr-photo:id=3303730994,size=m]
[flickr-photo:id=3303730844,size=m] [flickr-photo:id=3302900811,size=m]


From KR Puram Region (taken during "Cross the damn road")

[flickr-photo:id=3290077459,size=m] [flickr-photo:id=3290896888,size=m] [flickr-photo:id=3290896656,size=m]
[flickr-photo:id=3290896062,size=m] [flickr-photo:id=3290072227,size=m]

Great Pictures !

Naveen - 23 February, 2009 - 13:45

Rithesh - Many thanks.

Bangalore's Pedestrians share side-walks with garbage, cattle, stray dogs, overflows from sewage-water pipes & have to fend off two wheelers & 3-wheelers who try to jump the queues at signals or at traffic jams !  What a pity.

Becoming extinct

ravishankar - 23 February, 2009 - 18:24

Footpaths are becoming the extinct species just like many which have perished in the past.

I still recall my teachers instructing when we were kids to use the footpath and cross the road only at zebra crossing.
Day-by-day i see each one of them getting narrower for the sake of road widening. All we have left in few years to show our children would be these photos. I guess along with "Save Trees" campaign, "Save the footpath" campaign needs to be kick started
Ravishankar

Who will save god though?

blrpraj - 24 February, 2009 - 06:01

I found the title quite amusing, and the title actually begs a bigger question - who will save god himself?  I am sure even god cannot be saved if he is a pedestrian in any of the Indian cities let alone Bangalore.

On another note  contrast this with pictures of footpath from halfway accross the world where people primarily move by car and there are hardly any pedestrians -
http://praja.in/discuss/2008/08/out-sight-out-mind#comment-7404

The above post that i had written a long time back on praja is a must read to understand the fundamentals of why we cannot provide decent footpaths.

If Penguins can....

Ravi_D - 24 February, 2009 - 07:36

... so can(can't) we?? :)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480088/The-worlds-zebra-crossing-penguins.html

Ravi

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