Ignored for long and forced to face hardships, pedestrians can soon look forward to more comfortable and secure road crossings with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) drawing up plans to set up 100 foot over bridges (FoBs) and subways across the city.
In the first phase, the civic body has set its sight on creating these facilities at 50 select locations and for the purpose, consultancy services for technical and financial studies have already been sought. “We are looking at creating safe passage for pedestrians with modern FoBs and subways at suitable intervals which have been identified using inputs from different sources including traffic police, voluntary bodies and people’s representatives,” GHMC Commissioner Somesh Kumar said.
Focus would also be on comforts of senior citizens, physically challenged and patients and the target is to have the project implementation for 50 facilities in next 100 days.
In view of a feeling that escalators were not really suitable, the attempt in these new FOBs would be to have lifts on both sides of FoBs in addition to steps. Mr. Somesh Kumar has been toying with the idea of deploying physically challenged persons to operate these lifts so that livelihoods can be provided to at least 400 of them. The GHMC wants to have the FoBs designed in such a way that apart from providing convenience for the pedestrians these facilities also lends a touch of aesthetics to the cityscape. Though a tentative list of locations has been prepared, the study by consultants would finalise the actual points for FoBs and subways.
And for the purpose, reconnaissance surveys, joint inspections by departments concerned such as Traffic Police, National Highway Authority of India, Roads & Buildings followed with traffic and pedestrian surveys would be carried out. “Once the consultant reports and estimates are in place, we will go for tendering. Our aim is to ensure around 100 FoBs and subways within next six months,” added Mr.Somesh Kumar.
