The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Subways here could have been better designed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 24, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Subways here could have been better designed

Deepika Arwind

This six-road junction is a
tricky place for pedestrians

Bangalore: While the continuing efforts to make pedestrians more comfortable manifest themselves in the form of skywalks and pedestrian subways, some of them, especially those at busy junctions, could have been planned better.

The six-road junction at Basaveshwara Circle is one such example. The Palace Cross Road, Chowdiah Road, Raj Bhavan Road, Millers Road, Palace Road, Race Course Road form a tricky place for pedestrians, with heavy traffic.

However, the problem with the network is that each of the subways which connect two roads, do not converge at a common point or interconnect.

Therefore, pedestrians will have to ascend and descend double the number of stairs if they want to go to the road that is diagonally opposite to them. This is true especially for students as two educational institutions, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and Sophia High School, are in the vicinity.

“If the subways do not converge, then it makes the exercise of crossing cumbersome and pointless,” said Chintamani R., a pedestrian.

The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has begun construction on the second pedestrian subway, out of the six planned at the circle.

One of them, on Raj Bhavan Road, opened on February 10. It seems that this subway is creating a bottleneck on the road, and is hardly used by pedestrians.

About converging the subways, a BBMP official said: “Some of the major water supply lines of the area lie under the circle, and it would be difficult to relay them.”

The pedestrian subway close to Sophia High School is a skywalk.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka