The joys of crossing a road

A thought for pedestrians

I know a number of these are being planned, but my experience is that they don't work for the pedestrian for a number of reasons.

a. They don't reduce speed enough.  I have seen cars go at almost 30 kmph over these (Yes 30 kmph happens sometimes in our city ;)).

b. No channeling of traffic into lanes just before these (they can use bollards for this).  Yes there are lane markings, but there are at least 2X vehicle lanes on any stretch of road. So imagine the plight of person stuck in the middle of this crossing.  Yes, most times they come out alive, but it is not fun to be stuck in the middle.

c) Nothing to warn motorists about 50 m before that there is a crossing coming.  They need to put warning about 50 m and blinking lights on either side of the crossing so that motorists can expect this - same goes for pedestrian crossings. 

Traffic has to be channeled into 2-3 lanes at these crossings via refuges so that pedestrians cross one lane at a time and know that an extra lane will not be created by an enterprising motorcyclist.  I think this needs to be done at pedestrian crossings as well, with the added advantage of streamlining traffic into lanes.

Srivathsa

If Praja felt I was not in the hold of the thread being discussed here, I regret that my comment has not worked its logic into the Praje here.

But my comment, and this thread are related nevertheless. Moving that comment into a separate blog/thread wont separate the issue from the ground reality beneath this trivial manifestation of a systemic issue - the road crossing problem i.e.

That this phenomenon is a problem in many a city, apart from Bengaluru, is not surprising, because as we would have all seen by now, migration - the uncontrolled flavour i.e. - has been infecting many cities in India. And Srivathsa needs to realise that my comment from no angle actually hinted that the rash-driving was exhibited only by migrant drivers. (And excuse me please, I wouldnt call drivers from Mandya/Maddur as migrants, just how you wouldnt call a Pune guy in Mumbai a migrant. But that doesnt give anyone an excuse to be callous on the road, of course.)

With due respect, the subtle reality that didnt occur to Srivathsa was the fact that the phenomenon of rash driving is arising as a chain reaction to uncontrolled growth, which is an eventuality of an uncontrolled migration of people that DO NOT WANT to fit into the cultural picture of the society. This unwillingness of the migrating to mingle and blend into the migrated society has led to artificial and unnecessary polarisation in a society that otherwise was doing fine! (I am sure people here have seen those glorious pics of Old Bengaluru!) This mingling could be culturally - which includes being able to communicate in the language of this land, to be able to respect the cultural values valued by this people etc.

Bottomline - it so happens that Praja has been that much more bothered about the problems relating to the roads in Bengaluru, because its such an intense consumer of this facility called road. But somewhere in its approach to solving problems on the road, it seems to have forgotten that the most widely present, and that one entity on the road that needs urgent correction are the people using it, & not the zebra, not the signal, not the road-surface or anything infrastructural. I am not undermining the importance of any such infrastructure, but just re-iterating the importance of the role the human factor plays in relation to such social issues. The Praja here might want to start thinking on these lines first!

So if this was off-topic, I take a bow, but earnestly say, that IMHO, this ought to be Praja's choicest topic, buddy :)

-Nijavaada

I had posted 6 months back a forum topic ' I was about to be killed'. It was a nightmare crossing Mysore road during peak hours between heavy vehicles whose drivers are usually uneducated and do not give any value for human life.

We can cross roads where between cars and 2 wheelers somehow, but, inbetween heavy vehicles is highly risky. We started a thread with SkyWalks then. Recently BBMP announced swanky skywalks with escalators and elevators. No news heard so far about that.

I see an immediate requirement of skywalks on ORR, Mysore Road, Old Madras Road, Corporation Circle where many cross roads to change the bus stops and in much more places which I have unseen.

SB and others,

It's been a while since I drove through the area so I couldn't remember for sure...if there was money to pump into pedestrian infrastructure on this stretch of OMR/ORR how many crossings do you think are needed? Would one at KR Puram Rly Stn (KJM) and another where the buses stop (at the foot of the flyover) work? How many more is too much?

SB, I second the idea of a proper "island bus stand" albeit a modified one, putting one in the middle in the Eastbound lanes is ok since most buses are headed toward Krishnarajapuram, Hoskote and beyond. The Westbound lanes on the other hand probably need to stick to the orthodox LHS bus stand configuration. Putting it against the median would just worsen the issue of weaving before traffic climbs onto the ORR ramp. As also suggested these could be sensibly integrated using a ped subway (see pic below) that doubles up as a tool to cross the road (staggered crossings are not going to work here: this is still in theory atleast, a highway). Furthermore the depth of the subway can also be reduced by grading on either side the surface road gradually to reduce the depth of the ped subway to just a couple of meters.
 

From Praja_posts

As a caveat though, design of the the bus bay/island (and for that matter siting) is critical since needs to accomodate atleast 2 buses simultaneously (if possible allow buses to pass)  and have reasonable room for entering and exiting buses to join traffic smoothly.

On another note If I had a couple of hundred crore rupees to spare, I would have pushed for a 4lane dual carriageway 2.5 km long tunnel that starts between the proposed Namma Metro Byapannahalli station goes under the Nagvarapalaya intersection and the narrow IR Salem line RUB, and emerges on Whitefield Road right before the ORR ramp to Sarjapur (see pic below) along with necessary up/down ramps to allow access to OMR and KJM. This frees up pretty much all known choke points along this stretch and returns the space along the road KR Puram stretch of ORR to residents and businesses in the area. Now back to what's likely to happen..does anyone know of any plans by IR/SWR to widen the Salem-line RUB?

From Praja_posts

I have always said, pedestrian crossing can be integrated within traffic signal such that they need not be given a separate time, instead their movement across pedestrian refuges happens in short segments when traffic is moving else where within a junction.

Here are pics I took last month at Oxford Circus, one of Europes busiest shopping streets -

Note the wide pedestrian refuges. Subways at Oxford circus lead to tube (and are not for crossing across - this is done as seen above). All the snaps were taken in one crossing phase when traffic moved across other roads on the junction.

And I can show images similar to above for  wide 3 + 3 lane roads too.

I dream of seeing such facilities in our cities some day.

ASJ