Edvard Munch’s late 19th century iconic art work ‘The Scream’, which is symbolic of the modern man’s anxieties, should aptly represent the bewilderment of a pedestrian at the rapidly progressing urban infrastructure in the city.
While the cardinal principle of urban development is to keep the pedestrian at the centre, civic authorities have cast him/her afar, even while enhancing the road network ever more to fit in the vehicles perennially increasing in size and number.
Strategic Road Development Plan (SRDP), the much-vaunted project for signal free traffic flow in several parts of the city, is a virtual bane for walkers. Flyovers and underpasses springing up within months have added speed to the vehicles and woes to pedestrians.
To describe the plight of pedestrians struggling to cross or even walk along the Old Mumbai Highway in Gachibowli, near KFC, the word ‘ordeal’ will be an understatement.
A golden opportunity to make amends would have been to also include infrastructure for pedestrians under the SRDP project. Barring a foot over-bridge (FOB) with a lift on either side near the new flyover, in Raidurg, little has been done. This, despite hundreds of people in the area risking their life and limbs daily while crossing roads to go to hospitals, educational institutions, hostels, commercial establishments, offices, police stations and places of worship.
At the crossroads
The focus on flyovers and improved road condition has made the going tough for them as vehicles are able to ply faster now. Absence of facilities, be it FOBs, basic pavements, zebra crossings or pelican signals coupled with the menace of wrong side driving by vehicles of varying sizes, is increasingly restricting the movement on foot by senior citizens in the locality. “My son asks me to not to go out alone and if necessary take a cab or an auto-rickshaw even for short distances,” laments a septuagenarian, who did not wish to be identified.
But for those forced by circumstances to cross the road, a plea to vehicles to stop, trembling body, slow steps and wrinkles of worry are an everyday story.
That there is no place for pedestrians in the scheme of things is evident from the Biodiversity signal to the IKEA showroom, a multi-lane stretch where vehicles race past one another even as people jump over the median.
Absence of FOBs
FOBs complemented by escalators and lifts seem to be a way forward since pedestrians, mostly young men and women, find the going tough at places where zebra crossing is there. A case in point is a pedestrian crossing created a little beyond the Cyberabad police commissioner’s office towards Gachibowli flyover. With no signal and a policeman seldom present, pedestrians have to bide time or, like a few others, walk a distance to climb the rather tall median and jump over to the other side.
Chintalkunta Y junction is one more location where the road width coupled with speeding vehicles ends up giving goosebumps to whoever tries to cross the road.
An underpass constructed as part of the SRDP has freed the Chintalkunta check post from signal and traffic cops, and the speed gathered by vehicles coming from beneath scare the pedestrians out of their wits. “Though my stop is near Hakeemabad Dargah, I get down one stop before near Chintalkunta Checkpost, because crossing the road near my stop has become increasingly difficult after construction of the underpass. Vehicles zoom past at unimaginable pace, and especially during night, their headlights blind you,” complains Madhavi Latha, a resident of Shakti Nagar.
Authorities have not thought enough to include even a FOB into the project design, though the location is conducive to a subway.
Several non-SRDP stretches, too, pose grave danger to pedestrians by depriving them of safe road crossing facilities, and the entire Inner Ring Road stretch is an apt example. Signals are too few, thanks to the introduction of U-turns, forcing people to cross the roads unmindful of the speeding vehicles. With colonies fast developing around areas such as Uppal and Nagole, pedestrian crossing facilities have become an absolute necessity here.
Signals no help
The situation is no better in core city, where road crossing is a difficult job even where signals are present. Schoolchildren and senior citizens trying to cross from Visveswaraya Bhavan towards Raj Bhavan Road experience it daily. “We use metro station stairs to cross over to the other side of the road. But from there, we have to court speeding vehicles going up and down the flyover to cross to the Raj Bhavan Road,” says Nisar Ahmed from MS Maqtha.
If anyone needs to know the plight of pedestrians, one need not go further than the Chief Minister’s camp office nee ‘Pragati Bhavan’ and its environs. While the fence on the road protecting the edifice has grown higher, the road space continues to be occupied by the new buildings lying further away and no one is allowed to even walk through despite high volume of vehicles speeding past day and night.
Secondly, it is next to impossible to cross the road anywhere from Greenlands to the Rajiv Gandhi statue with a few bothering to stop by the zebra crossing; the pelican signal has become extinct. A new FOB is under construction which halts on one side of the road. At the other end, there are traffic policemen only when there is VVIP movement.
The stretch from Mehdipatnam towards Toli Chowki and Shaikpet is another problem area, where pedestrians have to wager their lives to cross the highway. A signal present earlier is non functional now, and traffic cops are conspicuous by their absence.
At KPHB, a FOB exists, but due to a non-functioning lift, it is not used as much as it should. It is difficult to carry the luggage on the staircase as the lift is closed most of the times, say users. A traffic signal arranged initially to help pedestrians cross the road before the opening of FoB is removed now.
The stretch from CTO junction near Paradise to flyover near Begumpet railway station is also a nightmare for pedestrians. The speeding vehicles and the medians on the road make it next to impossible for walkers to cross the road. Notwithstanding a foot over-bridge at the Government Degree College, Begumpet, its use is limited to just the students.
Road-crossing near Saint Ann’s School in Secunderabad is another challenge. The vehicles that zoom past at lightning speed make pedestrians think twice about stepping forward to cross to the other side.
Even though there are three metro stations at Prakashnagar, Rasoolpur and Paradise, which have skywalks, they are not of much use. Pedestrian take the risk of crossing the road wherever they wish to.
Further, while signals are installed at CTO junction, Rasoolpura cross roads and near Hyderabad Public School from where pedestrians can easily cross the roads, they avoid it conveniently.
(With inputs from M. Ravi Reddy, V. Geetanath and B. Chandrashekhar)
