Nothing establishes the government’s apathy towards providing pedestrian facilities better than the long-pending proposal to construct foot-over-bridges (FOBs) and skyways at various locations in the city.
After being tossed back and forth between GHMC and HMDA, the project to construct 52 FOBs and to install eight skyways is cooling its heels in the Municipal Administration and Urban Development department.
Though tenders were floated more than a year ago for the project, they are yet to be finalised by the government. Costing around ₹240 crore, the project is expected to provide much-needed reprieve to citizens on busy roads.
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While the city has had a few FOBs, this is the first time skyways have been proposed, which would facilitate crossing over from any side to any side of the junctions without having to wait for the vehicle traffic to pause.
The eight proposed sky-ways are at junctions of Uppal, Aramghar, Lakdikapul, Suchitra, Bowenpally, Road No.12, Banjara Hills, RTC Crossroads, and Chilkalguda ring road.
The fact that only four of these are to be equipped with escalators puts a big question mark on their use. It has been common experience with FOBs that unless equipped with escalators, people seldom use them.
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Reluctant to allow display of advertisements on the FOBs, the government has asked the GHMC and HMDA to take up the project with their own funds through tenders. A total of 39 FOBs costing ₹75 crore will be taken up by HMDA accordingly.
Officials inform under the condition of anonymity that the tenders were sent to the government for final approval before elections to the Legislative Assembly in December 2018.
Soon after, came Lok Sabha elections with the model code of conduct being in effect. Lack of dedicated Minister for the MA&UD delayed the approval further. Now that the Minister is in place, things are looking up, they say.
While FOBs are a welcome proposal, city authorities have almost given up on other possible facilities such as subways and pelican signals altogether.
Though the talk about 100-odd pelican signals has been in the air for over two years, nothing concrete has materialised in that respect so far.
With failed experiment near Koti and RTC Crossroads, officials have altogether trashed subways as an alternative, though they have continued to experiment with FOBs despite failure. “Subways could be an effective alternative where the vehicle speed is very high. At Koti and RTC Crossroads, the speeds were not high, and the junctions had signals and traffic cops. With proper location study, subways are often the best possible remedy for road crossing,” says an official.