Pedestrians stamped out of traffic plans

Pedestrians stamped out of traffic plans
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: In the last four years, 1,318 pedestrians have lost their lives in mishaps and a shocking 9,184 have been injured.

Though over 30 percent of all fatalities on the road each year involve pedestrians, town planners, civic authorities and the traffic police have done little to address the issue.



Pedestrian safety often figures last on the list of priorities of authorities though this fallacy has been pointed out time and again by road safety consultants hired by the Government.

In a city like Bangalore with a population of over 6.9 million and two million vehicles, there are three times the number of pedestrians on the road at any given point in time compared to the number of vehicles.

Consider this. No footpath in the city has been remodelled to accommodate the growth in pedestrian movement in the last 20 years. Apart from cosmetic changes in commercial areas like M.G. Road and Brigade Road like laying ceramic tiles, little has been done to widen them.

In fact many footpaths in the city have been narrowed down to widen roads and accommodate the growth in traffic. The footpaths are barricaded only on select roads.

Encroachments on the footpath, both permanent and temporary abound. While shopkeepers encroach some space, hawkers take the rest, forcing the poor pedestrian to walk on the road. The Bangalore City Corporation is blind to this.

With 60 one-ways in the city now, the flow of traffic on these roads is fast and continuous. While this has benefited motorists a little, pedestrians find it difficult to cross at unmanned junctions. Nrupatunga Road and Cunningham Road are two examples.

There are 35,000 traffic junctions in the city. How many of them have zebra crossings? Not even 10 percent. Even where they are present, they are invisible as they are re-painted only once a year (thanks to the police department’s meagre budget).

Jaywalking rules are not strictly enforced and this adds to the problem in places like K.R. Market and Majestic.

One high-risk group of pedestrians is school children. In school zones with heavy traffic, children are prone to cross the road without caution and end up dead or injured.

Though it is an easy task, the police are yet to identify these junctions and set up special traffic signals to alert motorists that school children are crossing.

Even the usual traffic signal at unmanned junctions gives the pedestrian very little time (in some junctions it is less than five seconds) to cross. A scientific study of traffic flow and density at each junction is required before the time is set.