JOIN US How many pedestrians use skywalks to cross roads? Very few, and at some places, none. DH visited several skywalks in the city, and found pedestrians preferring to jump across road medians to get to the other side.
Pedestrians are aware darting across busy, traffic-dense roads is risky, but say they have no choice as the skywalk stairs are high and hard to climb. DH’s observations were confirmed by a survey led by traffic expert M N Sreehari. “Just 1% of people who need to cross roads use skywalks,” he said.
The survey, titled ‘Review and Evaluation of Existing Skywalks in Bengaluru,’ found many flaws in the skywalks. Inconvenient locations and lack of fencing were prompting pedestrians away from skywalks, Sreehari said.
In fact, pedestrian services are deteriorating services because of the skywalks, the survey observed.
Just for money
“People are not using skywalks because they are not designed from the utility point of view,” Sreehari said.
“They are just used for revenue.” People who invest Rs 1.25 crore to Rs 2 crore on a skywalk are not bothered about how useful it is to predestrians. All they care about is the display of their client’s advertisements, he said. The police, meanwhile, have launched a selfie-campaign to promote use of skywalks.
Poor usage
DH asked R Hithendra, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), whether the police were aware of the dismal levels of skywalk usage. He agreed they were not popular, and attributed the poor usage to the lack of lifts and escalators.
“We have written to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike about such flaws,” he said, describing their response as encouraging.