BENGALURU: Bengaluru, globally known as the Silicon Valley of India providing solutions to various issues, is struggling without proper footpaths. Is it a rocket science to build and maintain footpaths? Why are the city’s footpaths in such a deplorable state?
Ask Founder of Bangalore Walks, Arun Pai - who along with Deepesh Agarwal, CEO and co-founder of MoveInSync, with their #BLRFootpathChallenge, aims to cover 100 km on Bengaluru’s footpath to review its health on why the city is lacking footpaths. He said he doesn’t agree with the sweeping generalisation and stated, “Some parts of the city have good footpaths and some don't. The entire purpose of my 100-km challenge is to identify exactly which stretches of road do not have footpaths, have footpaths that have obstacles and have footpaths that are good to walk on.”
Until we come up with a precise, rational and commonsense way of rating and evaluating footpaths and specifying the exact problem, we cannot solve the problem, he said.
Sharing an update of the 100 km challenge, Arun Pai said, “I have covered 25 km of the campaign which started on September 15 and the results are very interesting and counter-intuitive. Not only do we have footpaths, some of them are very good.”
“I am a walker and runner. I have been using the city's streets and footpaths for the past 20 years - I conduct city tours - guided walks and runs. I know that there are good footpaths and not-so-good footpaths. I know there are many efforts (by government and citizen groups) to address the 'problem' - however I believe that the problem has not been accurately defined in a granular way on which an actionable solution can be developed,” Arun Pai said.
The purpose of taking up the #BLRFootpathChallenge is to create a base survey that others can use. The full results of the 100 km survey and its impact will be clear on Oct 3, when the results are presented at a Symposium of various stakeholders in the area of Mobility, he said.
Deepesh Agarwal, whose MoveInSync provides employee transportation, said, “We commute 6 lakh employees to work and over the years the traffic in Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai, NCR, and Hyderabad is only increasing. Indians, on average, spend 8% of their life commuting. One way office commute time which was 51 minutes in 2019 has increased by 15% (59 mins) in 2024.”
To decongest the cities we are organizing a Mobility Symposium with various government bodies, civic societies and corporations to explore solutions. But we were thinking only in terms of shared mobility, public transport and the use of electric vehicles, Deepesh said, adding that his friend Arun Pai forced him to think of pedestrian mobility as a genuine alternative to easing congestion. The idea is to rate 100 km of footpaths (to start with) on their usability and work with the government to fix these footpaths which are unusable.
For cars we demand signal-free corridors, for pedestrians, we want Obstacle Free Footpath, he said.
Sandeep Anirudhan, Convenor - Citizens' Agenda for Bengaluru said that the root cause for the problems is that the city is governed by 15 parastatals instead of one and said, “The city doesn't have a mechanism for planning, the Metropolitan Planning Committee is dormant and there is no masterplan. The city is governed by 15 parastatals instead of one city government and all these are violations of the constitution, the 74th Amendment.”
Sharing her views, Civic activist Kathyayini Chamaraj said, “It is because the decision-makers do not walk on the footpath and do not realise what travails the pedestrians go through. They are always moving in their cars and see only the traffic congestion caused by vehicles and think the solution is to widen roads. Hence, they widen roads and usurp the footpath space.”
Given the current thinking, it is almost impossible to have good footpaths because pedestrians are the last priority for decision-makers, she said adding that good footpaths are impossible because construction debris, cables, transformers, garbage, cars and two-wheelers are allowed to occupy pavements.
Answering a question on what is the difficulty in building proper walkable footpaths, Kathyayini said, “Broken slabs of pavements are never replaced in time. Pavements are not continuous, making them impossible for persons on wheelchairs. Square cement blocks being used to cover pavements end up uneven very soon making one trip on them. Ramps at entrances to houses/apartments make pedestrians walk at a 45% inclination. Kerb stones are kept sloping to allow cars to get onto the pavements making them slippery for pedestrians.”
BS Prahallad, Engineer-In-Chief, BBMP, however, maintains that Bengaluru has 13,000 km of road length and out of that, the city has very good footpaths at the Central Business District areas. “It is being extended in outer areas as well. At present what we are seeing is the footpaths in many places is encroached by street vendors. There is a High Court ruling that footpaths should be free from all kinds of encroachments. We have sensitised all Zonal Chief Engineers to take up the footpath encroachment removal drive every first and third Saturday. If this is done regularly, better sense will prevail among street vendors who are occupying the footpaths. In many places, there are vendors for a long time. They have to do vending on some portion available but cannot put permanent structures or create problems to pedestrians," he said.
While admitting that civic works also lead to damage to footpaths, Prahallad said the utilities and heavy machines sometimes take away part of roads and footpaths, but once the work is done, the footpath needs to be brought back to its original shape and it has been done at many places. “It is an ongoing process. But transformers on footpaths are a challenge. Transformers and encroachments are a big challenge in providing good footpaths and BBMP is doing its best to reclaim footpaths.”
Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) MN Anucheth said footpath encroachment removal is corporation’s responsibility. “Traffic police deploy locks on vehicles parked on footpaths and no parking areas and impose penalties,” he said.