Sky walks or some memorials?

Sky walks or some memorials?

Sky walks, built for the safety of pedestrians, remain underutilised even as people get run over while crossing the busy city roads. The BBMP is now planning to introduce escalators in skywalks to draw commuters, Sunitha Rao R reports

Sunitha Rao R



The empty sky walks, spanning city roads, stand more like memorials. The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had spent lakhs of rupees on them to help pedestrians cross the road safely. But very few use them. People still stand impatiently at crowded junctions and take risky walks across the road. A few pedestrians get run over as they get confused on whether to go ahead or return. One such victim was Kuppamma, a domestic help, caught under a BMTC wheel on Queens Road on Tuesday.
"I don't like climbing so many steps of the sky walk. Instead, I prefer waiting at the zebra crossing till the traffic eases," says Santhosh MN, a businessman working near Jayanagar.
"The relevance of any infrastructure depends on its utilisation. Sky walks remain empty as commuters don't want to spend more time and energy in climbing their steps. They're not useful to physically challenged persons either," says Manohar BM, a bank official.
Even the lighting on sky walks is poor, according to him.
Sky walks are absent where they are most needed. In 2007, a group of companies had sent a memorandum to the BBMP for the construction of a sky walk on Inner Ring Road. With thousands of vehicles zooming on the Inner Ring Road, crossing the road is a dangerous task for the 40,000-odd employees. Palike has not responded to the request.
Response normally comes only in the face of a tragedy. The sky walk near the Indian Institute of Science was set up by the institute itself after a student was killed in front of the building. The Indian army has set up own sky walk near Frazer Town.
Although sky walks are not serving the citizens, ad agencies are making use of the space to exhibit their products. Presently the pedestrian overbridges can be seen near Alankar plaza in Majestic area, on Residency road, on the way to HAL airport, in front of Maharani Ammanni college on Sheshadri Road, in Jayanagar 4th block, near Kendriya Vidyalaya, and in front of the Indian Institute of Science