No thought for pedestrians

Amitabh Shukla

New Delhi, November 29

When Transport Minister Haroon Yusuf and other officials of his department went for a conference on Transport to San Francisco recently, they were in for a surprise. In most of the presentations on futuristic transport scenario, walking was considered a mode of transport. It was being planned along with other modes of public and private transport.

On a reality check, officials found that in Delhi, pedestrian traffic was never thought about by the policy planners. It is only the motorised means of transport and faster traffic which has been the main concern of the urban traffic and transport planners.

“For the traffic engineers, planners and others, the word pedestrian is not even in their vocabulary,” said Geetam Tiwari, traffic expert and professor at IIT Delhi. She said that Delhi has invested a huge amount in the last few years in upgrading road infrastructure – constructing flyovers and arterial roads. “No consideration was ever made for the pedestrians in these,” she says.

Transport Minister Haroon Yusuf admitted that pedestrian traffic is somewhat a neglected area. “We would like to promote easy movement of pedestrians and construct cycle tracks and efforts would be made in this direction,” he said. Yusuf informed that the High Capacity Bus corridor between Ambedkar Nagar and Ambedkar Stadium would have a separate corridor for cyclists and the pedestrians.

Officials in the department point out that the sanctity of the zebra crossing has to be maintained at all costs. “In foreign countries, when a pedestrian crosses the road, the entire traffic comes to a halt. Here, the pedestrians have to jostle with the motorised traffic for road space and often pay for their lives in the process,” said an official.

Tiwari suggested that suitable changes should be made in the signaling system so that it becomes pedestrian friendly. “The signal cycle should be shorter so that the pedestrians don’t cross the road in a hurry,” she said. Tiwari rubbished the idea of constructing subways, overhead bridges and even escalator driver foot over bridges. “While the first two are inconvenient, the escalator cannot be maintained in open areas,” she pointed out.

An officials, who went abroad for the conference summed up saying it all comes down to adherence of law. “If two American drivers drive in the city streets for a while, they too would become like the Indian drivers – careless and carefree with least concern for the pedestrians. On the other hand, if two Indian drivers drive in the streets in a US city, they too would follow the stringent rules and regulations in force there,” he said. (2005)