Pedestrians at peril on Residency cross road

 Offices, shopping centres and restaurants on MG Road, Brigade Road and surrounding areas attract thousands of Bengalureans throughout the week, more so on weekends.

In spite of being an important area, traffic and pedestrian movement here is not smooth.
The short, narrow stretch of Residency cross road which serves as a crucial link between Mahatma Gandhi Road and Residency Road can be a difficult few metres to cross. Though parking is permitted only on one side of the road, vehicles parked on both sides impede traffic on this one-way. The TenderSURE roadwork along Residency Road has already slowed down vehicular movement and irregular parking worsens the situation. Vehicles parked on the footpath, the only one along this road, obstruct movement of pedestrians, adding to their woes.

The situation is at its worst during lunch hours, after  noon. Ravi, a security guard at Akshara restaurant on the road, said, “During lunch time, usually a lot of people park their vehicles here. We don’t know where they come from. We informed the traffic police and they cleared the vehicles once, but the problem persists.”

M S Atmanand observes the traffic from where he works at Corner House. “It affects our business when traffic jams happen,” he said.

DCP (Traffic) East Zone, C K Baba, said the problem occurs when people who come to pick up children from nearby schools park their vehicles on the road. “We are having discussions on how we can tackle this problem. We will ask the school authorities to cooperate.”

The situation is now better at the bustling Cauvery Emporium junction, just meters away. The ‘pedestrian signals’ which are supposed to indicate to the public when it is safe to cross the road rarely turn green. The head constable who mans the traffic at this junction said the signal has not been functioning.

“People somehow dodge the traffic and manage”, he sympathised. Terrel Lewis, a pedestrian waiting to cross the road said, “I walk on this road frequently and I have never seen this light turn green. Sometimes I have to wait for up to five minutes for it to be safe enough to cross.”