“Give us walkable footpaths”

Over 260 residents of Bengaluru have signed an online petition for safer streets in Bengaluru. For years, citizens have been demanding pedestrian-friendly neighbourhoods. Thanks to broken footpaths, lack of proper drains, and not pruning overgrown trees along pavements, many citizens have been injured, and some have even died due to this civic apathy. According to the city traffic police, pedestrians made up 37% of the deaths from road crashes from 2017 to 2020.

Bad roads and footpaths are particularly tough to navigate for children, pregnant women, senior citizens, and the differently abled. According to city police data, the elderly make up a third of the pedestrian deaths in Bengaluru. Besides, among all the children killed in traffic incidents, 51% are pedestrians.

The online petition states: “There is an urgent need to make Bengaluru’s streets safe for all and reverse the culture of car-first infrastructure, and put pedestrians and cyclists at the centre of development plans to decrease traffic fatalities among other things.”

Some of the demands petitioned online to make Bengaluru’s streets safe include:

• Conduct a comprehensive, equitable assessment of the city’s footpath network to identify high-casualty locations. Address the primary cause of the casualties and the critical issues with the network.
• Further the safety assessments of vulnerable road users. Integrate safe and adequate accommodation of all users in all new and existing programmes concerning surface transportation networks.
• Align city/transportation budgets towards designing safe and comfortable infrastructure for all users, not just cars.
• With respect to road infrastructure, ensure coordination and ownership among various government agencies at every step, in processes such as planning and policy making, community engagement, evaluating system impacts, setting design standards, identifying partnerships and funding sources, contracting and implementation, monitoring and enforcement, and regular maintenance.
• Regularly engage the public and stakeholders to enhance awareness around road safety. Share findings to change citizens’ perception around safety, especially that of vulnerable road users. Informed engagement ensures that city projects are in line with user expectations, and users are in turn aware of upcoming changes in their neighbourhoods. This process also enhances transparency between government authorities and citizens.
• Monitor the dynamic environment and people of Bengaluru to update plans and policies at regular intervals, to keep implementation of initiatives relevant and beneficial.