Tear down flyovers, create public spaces, make city friendly for 8-80 year olds

The result of lack of urban and transport planning is the steel flyover to chaos announced last week. Passenger Car Unit (PCU) counts by the BDA stated that the traffic will reduce on the existing carriageway anywhere between 30 and 50% after the bridge gets built.

Decrease in PCU is just half the story. The other half, which includes projections of traffic for the next 20 years and how the flyover will not suffice then, is a story left unsaid. The answer to this will be another layer of flyover? How long do we adjust the belt to fit our obesity epidemic? And at what cost?

Over 800 trees are expected to be felled to fit our appetite for cars. What is the environmental cost to this destruction? It is reported that the trees will be planted elsewhere on the outskirts. Does that mean the residents along the corridor go to the outskirts for breathing?

The earth has crossed the 400PPM threshold permanently. Our children will never get to breathe the air we breathed when we were children. Yet, we are not able to see past our nose and reverse this trend. Where is our individual accountability to this problem?

The existing stretch between Chalukya junction and Hebbal flyover is already signal-free. The only real issues on this stretch are related to uneven carriageway widths and four major badly engineered junctions that cause bottlenecks and give the impression of congestion.

The real transformation is in making policy changes to reverse the unsustainable way the city is growing, by making bold decisions such as prioritising people over cars and budgeting for sustainable modes of transport.

The rest of the world is already moving towards livable cities where walking and cycling are taking over. They are tearing down flyovers, creating public spaces and making cities friendly for 8-80 year olds, who today are resigned to their homes like caged animals for the fear of being knocked dead by cars.

Public transportation is becoming popular and is something that is beyond a build-contract by the BDA. Defining modal share and prioritising them are in the realm of planning by an independent authority.

The need for a Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA), which looks at integrated planning and prioritises road space for moving people instead of cars, is now more than ever. Until such time the UMTA steps in and town planning bodies chart out a vision for intelligent integrated mixed use planning, the city is going to suffer the consequences.

It is time the people stepped and said “NO” to more flyovers and asked for an UMTA which decides what gets built.

Sathya Sankaran
Founding member of CiFoS and Praja RAAG