Deccan Herald 28.11.2013
Police, BBMP join hands to make pedestrian ‘king’
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.
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.”
