Bangalore
Mirror: Bangalore: Tuesday, 16 September 2014.
The effort of
BDA and BBMP to decongest Bangalore's busiest roads by widening them turned out
to be fatal for pedestrians. Between 2008 and 2014 (March), 1,085 have died,
most of them while trying to cross the roads.
Around five
years ago, in an effort to decongest a few of the city's emerging busy
stretches, both the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) and the Bruhat
Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) widened the roads and upgraded them to
'international standard.' However, the result in many cases shows a scary
picture of steep rise in accidents and subsequent loss of life.
According to
the latest data made available by the Bangalore Traffic Police under Right to
Information Act, after the expansion, 175 pedestrians were killed in road
accidents on the Madivala Outer Ring Road junction on Hosur Road, 128 people on
Hosur Road, 88 pedestrians lost their lives on the widened Varthur Main Road
along the Outer Ring Road while 69 people were crushed to death on the
Bannerghatta-Outer Ring Road Junction. Between 2008 and 2014 (March), a
whopping 1,085 pedestrians have died while 3,123 people have been severely
injured on city roads.
Ironically,
the data revealed that it is only the widened roads that are turning out to be
the nemesis of pedestrians. According to urban planning experts, the roads have
not only considerably failed to deliver on the objective of decongestion, but
also jeopardised the lives of pedestrians. The wide roads, while facilitating
motorists and swanky automobiles, have totally cut off mobility of several
hundred people across the city, experts claimed.
No
Amenities for pedestrians
Prompted by
the general notion that people are afraid of crossing wide roads, Vinay K
Sreenivasa of Alternative Law Forum along with some other members filed the RTI
to fetch the data.
"We did
not know what was preventing people from using such wide roads as civic
agencies claim that they are wide and spacious enough for pedestrians and
motorists. However, these statistics prove that the people are indeed losing
their lives by venturing to cross these wide roads."
Sreenivasa
attributes the spike in accidents to the lack of amenities for pedestrians.
"While some of the roads lack basic footpaths, majority of them do not
have facilities like zebra-crossing, pelican lights, skywalks or pedestrian underpasses.
At some roads, underpasses have been built where people hardly cross over or
are found locked all the time. In the absence of these when pedestrians venture
out either to cross or walk they will only be mowed down by speeding
vehicles," Sreenivasa added.
Jenny Pinto,
who has been fighting for pedestrian rights in Bangalore said, "What
scares people is the fast moving traffic. They just race with each other on
these stretches. Senior citizens, women and kids are forced to cut off their
mobility and do not venture out fearing for life. Such is the situation on
Bangalore roads."
'Narrow
roads don't kill people'
Vinay also
clarified that the statistics about pedestrian deaths and severe injuries
confuted the common myth about narrow roads killing people. "All civic
agencies contend that narrow roads lead to accidents and death of people. But
in the details provided by the traffic police there is hardly any evidence to
prove the claim as no deaths have been reported from narrow stretches of Bangalore.
On the other hand, with the widening there is no place for people to cross or
stand. Medians have also been shrunk to their smallest possible size. We
believe that widening has been done only to help movement of cars and other
vehicles," he added.