CH NEWS
BENGALURU
Imagine a footpath so unusable that almost everyone chooses to walk beside speeding buses instead. Welcome to Dinnur Main Road, one of RT Nagar’s busiest neighbourhood connectors.
Nearly 90% of pedestrians walking on the busy carriageway despite the presence of footpaths. Encroachments, garbage, parked vehicles, and broken infrastructure have reduced footpaths to a strip here, barely any space, barely any walkers.
Instead of doing a fine balancing act on footpaths, citizens throw themselves in harm’s way by walking on the extreme edge of the road caressing the kerb, with the constant buzz of traffic for company.
The corridor connects RT Nagar with Sultanpalya and several surrounding neighbourhoods, carrying a steady stream of BMTC buses, school buses, cars, and two-wheelers through the day. Hundreds of residents, students, and shoppers use the stretch daily, yet pedestrians are left with little choice but to share the road with moving traffic.
Large sections of the footpath have been taken over by fruit vendors, cobbler kiosks, temporary stalls, banners, and commercial spill over.
In several places, shopkeepers have parked vehicles directly on the pavement, leaving virtually no room for people to walk. Garbage heaps make matters worse. Waste, discarded furniture, dry tree trunks, and branches occupy entire sections of the footpath, forcing pedestrians onto the carriageway.Continuity is another casualty.
The footpath frequently narrows, disappears, or is blocked by encroachments and overgrown vegetation, forcing pedestrians to keep switching between the pavement and the road.
At several locations, the usable width shrinks to less than a metre.The situation is especially worrying around schools. Several children walking on the road because footpaths were either blocked or unusable.
Dinnur Main Road is relatively narrow for the traffic it carries, and buses travelling in opposite direction often leave barely enough space along the edge of the carriageway.
For pedestrians pushed off the footpath, every walk becomes a risky negotiation with traffic. For a corridor lined with homes, schools, and businesses, the pedestrian infrastructure falls well short of what the neighbourhood demands.
Footpaths have been in this condition for years without good remedy.
Senior citizens, like my mother, cannot use many of these footpaths because of the huge difference in levels. The roads, too, are in poor condition, and traffic is menacingly overwhelming: Sunitha Sonu, Kaval Byrasandra resident.I walk my two children home from school every day amid constant fear of which vehicle might come from behind. When there is no safe space to walk on, what option do we have.