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Police, BBMP join hands to make pedestrian 'king'

Thursday, 28 November 2013 06:57 administrator
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Deccan Herald             28.11.2013 

Police, BBMP join hands to make pedestrian 'king'

Police, BBMP join hands to make pedestrian 'king'. DHNS Photo

Police on Wednesday launched yet another campaign, ‘Sugama safewalk’, to make the City’s roads safer for pedestrians. Police Commissioner, Raghavendra Auradkar, has promised his force would coordinate with the BBMP and other agencies to ensure pedestrians’ safety.

‘Sugama safewalk’ is part of a larger initiative to increase coordination among various civic agencies to improve the lives of citizens, especially women, children, elderly and the differently abled, on roads.

As part of the campaign, the zonal panel will — based on pedestrians’ problems, public opinion on traffic obtained through social media, and traffic situations — give its feedback and accordingly the interventions to improve the situation will be made. The interventions would be to regulate traffic or improve the engineering or designs of roads, footpaths, etc.

To raise awareness about pedestrians’ safety, the traffic police will improve signages and display boards, besides uploading information on their website. After three months, the interventions will be improved and implemented across the City, at every junction or road which endanger pedestrian safety. This may be due to narrow, damaged footpaths or non-existing footpaths, encroachments, one-ways, etc.

The programme has been launched at Trinity Circle, Siddapura junction up to 10th Cross, Madiwala police station junction up to Aiyyappa temple junction, Lalbagh West Gate junction, Havanur junction, Yeshwantpur junction and Esteem Mall junction (near Yelahanka). The places were chosen as studies showed pedestrians are more vulnerable at these points.

Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic and Safety), B Dayananda, said that the campaign had been designed after consultations and studying the trends in traffic accidents in the City over past three years.

One location for each traffic zone has been selected to implement the project in a pilot phase. Each location will have a panel to implement the project with the zonal ACP sharing it with members of BBMP technical support staff and this mechanism will execute the civil work at the location to facilitate the improvements.

‘Flawed design’

Auradkar blamed the BBMP for flawed road designs and poor quality. He said the BBMP should be sensitive as far as the safety of pedestrians was concerned. The speed breakers or road humps should be on narrows roads, crossings and not on main roads, he added.

Managing traffic is a big problem in the City and the BBMP and traffic police should share the responsibility. Despite many road safety campaigns, both the traffic police and the BBMP have not been able to reach out to public, he regretted, urging the BBMP to sensitise its staff about the issue, and promised cooperation from the police force.
On his part, BBMP Engineer-in-Chief D Rangaraju said, “Speed breakers on roads are installed after research and considering the opinions of different departments including police. But we are open to discussions,” he added.

He said the programme should be taken seriously and footpaths dedicated to pedestrians. “There are very few footpaths where people can walk as most of them are encroached upon while many are used by two-wheeler riders.”