A few blocks from Banashankari Bus Stand is the Hunasemara bus stop where a crowd of school children alights every morning and continues walking on the road, amidst traffic.
Here, stone slabs on the sidewalks are missing, making for a dangerous drop into the ditch if one does not keep a lookout.
Neha Surya works in the area, and said that as she walks down the same stretch everyday, she has learnt to avoid ‘the strewn refuse and gaps’. “But it’s very risky for pedestrians who are not familiar with the road.”
Not surprisingly, walking on the footpaths here seems to have become the last resort for most pedestrians. “How can you walk on the footpaths here?” asks a pedestrian who didn’t want to be named. “There’s a school around the corner and the children need footpaths as accidents occur often on this stretch and the road gets blocked,” she complained.
“My advice is that nobody should walk here after dark,” said a shocked customer, Sasi Kumar S A, at a flower shop here. “If the main roads are like this, I cannot imagine what the connecting ones must be like.”
Missing slabs are not the only problem here, however. “The drains were blocked, so after many of us complained, the corporation got them cleaned. But they dumped all the mud and dirt from there on the footpaths,” A Ravikumar, a driver who parks his truck in the vicinity, told City Express.
He added that he and some fellow drivers were responsible for getting the sludge cleaned.
“We have to make sure that the road and sidewalks remain clean,” said Deviramma, who sells bamboo ladders near the junction there. “I sweep the stretch everyday, and have to keep chasing off male passers-by who think they can take a toilet break here,” she added.
B Somashekar, councillor for ward 179, under which the area falls, remained unavailable to City Express, despite several tries. Reportedly, he is, currently, in Mandya.