footpaths

On August 24, five months after Cubbon Park was made traffic-free, the Horticulture Department said that traffic would be allowed here again. This was despite BBMP passing the traffic-free Cubbon Park proposal on June 30 and the impassioned appeals of citizen groups like Heritage Beku. For years, activists have been striving for a pedestrian-friendly Bengaluru but evidence suggests there is a long way to go. With its ill-equipped infrastructure for pedestrians, Bengaluru has the third-highest number of pedestrian fatalities among the top eight Indian metros. Pedestrian injuries and fatalities also account for the majority of road accidents in the city.…

Hayes Road in Richmond Town is considered one of the better addresses to have in town. Yes, the homes are posh, the residents keep excellent, photo worthy homes, the gardens are lovely, but the condition of the road is a total and absolute mess. The road is a despair of the residents  who have been trying desperately to get the corporation to do something to alleviate their suffering. Take a look at the pictures; you need to go no further. At the end of the road, there is a house which residents say has been locked up for years. In…

Namma Bengaluru Foundation met the BBMP Administrator, Vijay Bhaskar and handed over a memorandum requesting them to take cognisance of the following issues and initiate action on the same. Delay in the completion of Tender Sure project across 7 major roads in Bengaluru The delay in completion of the above-mentioned project is a major cause of traffic congestion on these roads and has caused grave inconvenience to the pedestrians. We urge you to expedite the completion of this project and ensure that the contractors are held accountable for the delay in the project. Urgent need to de-silt storm water drains…

I tried to balance myself very carefully as I took each step with great caution. No, I was not performing any acrobatics or balancing trick. I was just walking on a busy street in the city. I could not walk on the footpath as the slabs of the pavements were removed and piled up in a half hazard manner. Some parts of it were dug up and the remaining parts, occupied by the vendors. It was impossible to walk on the road, as the traffic was very heavy. Walking on the streets of Bangalore City is indeed a great feat.…

Last month -- The  Lokayukta resigned. The government deregulated oil prices and bus fares went up immediately, and I tripped and fell at the post office and fractured a bone. These seemingly unconnected events have a common denominator, as you will see.Let’s go from the bottom up -- my fall. I headed for the post office across the road, and was near its entrance when a jagged footpath tile caught my sandals and I crashed on the floor some distance away, flat on my face.Onlookers came running, to help get on my feet and gather my scattered belongings (bag, purse…

The first trains on the Metro are about to run in the next six to nine months, so this is a good time to ensure that a few other steps are taken to make the new infrastructure more effective. This is particularly because the world over, Metro systems are usually not financially viable, and this has to be overcome by some tie-in arrangement in the real estate market, through capital grants from government and through other control measures that benefit the transit system.Bangalore Metro is no different. Over the course of a decade and more, the state has been willing…

For a mathematician who has been honoured with the Padmabhushan and made a fellow of the Royal Society, Professor Narasimhan made one small wrong calculation on the morning of Monday, December 14th, 2009.Walking down the narrow sidewalk along Sanjaynagar main Road, he tried to get past a large advertisement board balanced on top of a massive slab of concrete placed in the middle of the pavement by a newly opened grocery store. The narrow sidewalk along Sanjaynagar main Road. Pic: Sakuntala Narasimhan. With barely enough space on either side of the concrete slab for walking past, his foot got caught…