A day after a 14-year-old student was mowed down by a garbage truck on the busy Ballari Road, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) took up an intensive cleaning drive of all the active pedestrian underpasses in the city on Tuesday.
The accident occured when the student and a few others tried to cross the busy Ballari Road by jumping over the 4-ft high median. They wanted to avoid using the pedestrian underpass at the junction, where water was stagnating. There is also a skywalk, equipped with a lift, just yards away from the accident spot.
BBMP officials said that the home guards posted at the pedestrian underpass had erred in not warning the deceased student and others from crossing the busy road and asking them to either take the skywalk or walk further ahead on the service road and cross the road under the Hebbal flyover.
The BBMP had come under fire after the student’s tragic death, with her parents alleging that there was water logging in the underpass due to heavy rain on Sunday evening and pedestrians were not able to use the underpass. This, the victim Akshaya’s father had said, forced her and the others to cross the main road when the incident occurred.
Incidentally, the state of pedestrian underpasses was a topic of discussion in the ongoing legislature session.
Civic officials claimed that of 20 pedestrian underpasses in the city, 18 were in active use. These included underpasses on Nrupathunga Road, K.R. Circle, Malleswaram, Town Hall, Dr. Rajkumar Samadhi, Basaveshwara Circle, Ballari Road, among others. Only two underpasses, civic officials claimed, were not in use. While the underpass at K.R. Market was being renovated, the one at Vijayanagar had been closed as the underground market was under construction there, they added.
Around six months ago, the BBMP had deputed home guards at 13 active underpasses to ensure safety of pedestrians using the facility and check on the illegal activities that had earlier been reported. In the remaining five underpasses, maintenance is taken up at the ward level and private security guards have been deputed here as well.
Civic officials told The Hindu that though some pedestrians used these facilities, many citizens preferred to cross the road at grade level, at signals. It has been found that pedestrian underpasses on roads with two or three lanes that had signals were often under-utilised. Here, citizens wait at signals and cross the road, they said.
