Pedestrians suffer as footpaths encroached

Nellore: The footpaths in the city have disappeared with shops using them as parking spaces and trading hubs. Several showrooms and restaurants have occupied them and placed ramps on the footpaths giving comfort to their customers for parking. Some commercial establishments have encroached them clubbing with the main structure giving no scope for movement of pedestrians.

The city is having a wide network of roads to an extent of above 300 km where there is no chance for construction of footpaths, according to the guidelines of the Indian Roads Congress (IRC). About 90 per cent of the city’s footpaths have been encroached by commercial establishments, traders and many others are being used as parking places.

Draft proposal of the IRC suggests that urban roads may be designed for a life of 20 years or higher using innovative design adopting high fatigue and rut resistant bituminous mixes. But, these guidelines were being neglected by the civic bodies while preparing designs. The city is having around 7 lakh population where politicos are planning to make it a smart one but footpaths and foot over bridges (FOBs) are now where to seen.

Thanks to the greediness of the local traders and absentia of politicos, who confine to assurances of preparing plans for comfort of the pedestrians. City has been facing severe strain with major chunk of auto-rickshaws, cars, two-wheelers, city buses and school buses and people face difficulty to cross roads and walk on the footpaths. Pedestrians in the city, especially on the Grand Trunk (GT) Road between KVR Petrol Pump to Gandhi Statue, face severe troubles due to lack of footpaths.

“In many areas of the city including GT Road we don’t find footpaths for easy movement of people. They were being used either as parking places or trading zones by petty vendors where traffic police fail to regulate encroachments. Line departments start blame game in this case giving discouragement to the denizens,” said K Harikrishna, a cloth merchant.

He added that FOBs and footpaths were considered earlier and subsequently have been disregarded. Failing to clear encroachments due to political pressure has been the main reason for many traffic related issues in the city.

Pitiably, physically challenged persons have no ramps anywhere for their convenient movement in the entire city. Further, planning to address menace of the pedestrians, civic body is considering starting a special drive for removal of encroachments in the city for constructing footpaths. But, this takes time as clearing encroachments in important places attracts political involvement, analysts say.