Walking is a basic and significant mode of transport and all human beings are pedestrians for varying time periods on roads. Right from the early childhood – till the person is unable to move, walking remains an important mode of travel. It is a well established fact that walking has health and environmental benefits. Walking is indeed found to be healthy and it helps in prevention and control of some non communicable diseases like diabetes, obesity, hyper tension, cardiac problems and others. Walking also contributes to reducing vehicular traffic resulting in reduction of air and noise pollution. Due to these benefits urban traffic planners in big cities encourage walking and non motorized transport to reduce traffic congestion.
In Indian cities, unlike any other road users, pedestrian is at a higher risk of injury due to lack of pedestrian facilities and indiscipline among road users. More than half of the people killed on roads in Indian cities in each year are pedestrians. In Bengaluru City the pedestrians killed are generally more than 40% of the total persons killed in road accidents. The following table illustrates the same.
Pedestrians killed and injured in Bengaluru city for the last 5 years
The main reasons for relatively high volume of accidents involving pedestrians in Bengaluru city can be attributed to the following;
- Lack of adequate and proper sidewalks/footpaths
- Absence of foot paths itself in some of the roads for example Lavelle road.
- Encroachment of footpath space by shop keepers and street vendors
- Installation of utilities like electric poles, transformers and garbage grills by civic agencies.
- Abuse of footpaths through vehicle parking and footpath riding.
Safety on road is a fundamental right of every citizens. Among all the road users, pedestrian should be given priority and traffic planners should make all out efforts to provide adequate pedestrian safety facilities in the city. Pedestrian Safety can be enhanced through the following engineering, enforcement and educational interventions.
Engineering Interventions:
- Providing adequate and proper paved footpaths with a minimum width of 1.5 mtrs.
- Sidewalks should be separated from other vehicles with a kerb or buffer zone, or both.
- Construction of under/over passes for pedestrians with sufficient illumination.
- Properly marked Zebra crossing and in high traffic volume roads, pedestrians controlled signal lights (Pelican) should be installed.
- Construction of raised pedestrian crossing across one way streets.
- Creating a road network that separates access roads from through-roads and ensure that traffic volume on access roads is as small as possible.
- Designing pedestrian pathways to facilitate movement of people with mobility impairments.
Enforcement Interventions:
- Pedestrianizing city centres or high density shopping areas.
- Restricting vehicle traffic in residential areas
- Locating roads, residential areas, workplaces and other industries in such a way that traffic volume and travel distances are minimized.
- Redesigning public spaces to cater for pedestrian safety needs, and to encourage walking.
- Strict enforcement of traffic rules, especially curbing footpath riding and footpath parking.
- Removal of encroachments on footpaths especially encroachment by shop keepers.
Educational Interventions:
- Raising awareness. This can include informing drivers about care, prudence, kindness, consideration, speed, pedestrian right- of- the way and traffic rules;
- Pedestrian education programmes for safe walking, road crossing and to walk facing the traffic at all times.
- School-based education. Such programmes help children acquire knowledge and skills for pedestrian safety.
- Increasing research inputs to develop pedestrian safety programmes.
The above interventions if implemented will reduce pedestrian related accidents to a considerable extent. Recently efforts have been made to provide standard world class pavement on some of the central business district (CBD) roads under Tender Sure. The same engineering interventions should be extended to all roads of the city.
The city definitely needs people friendly roads. Increasing vehicular volumes does not necessarily warrant road conflicts resulting in deaths, injuries and disabilities. Therefore due importance should be given to provide good pedestrian walkways along with good roads. The implementation of the above pedestrian safety engineering and enforcement measures along with education for people to accept changes, will go a long way in making Bengaluru city roads safer for pedestrian and the city more livable.