Chennai :
Every morning, state government employee Aruna Devi dreads changing buses at Adyar depot to get to Chepauk, where her office, Ezhilagam, is located. Being visually challenged, Aruna prefers putting her life on the line and waiting on the road rather than getting on to an uneven pavement and risking a fall.
Adyar depot on LB Road is the main transfer point for thousands of residents of East Coast Road and Thiruvanmiyur like Aruna, who have to reach various parts of the city. People, share autos, autos and buses share space in the congested depot. The pavements are uneven, narrow and have a number of obstacles and breaks.
“When the bus does turn up, we have to rush to get in,” says Devi, treasurer of the State Forum for Rights of Women with Disability. “I can’t risk tripping on the broken pavement or bumping into an electricity box. I prefer waiting on the road,” she says.
Taking into account complaints from the disabled and other residents, the corporation has started laying disabled-friendly pavements. “The new pavements are designed by architects taking into account different needs of commuters and the road’s length and width,” said mayor Saidai Duraisamy . “Disabled people can get on and off the pavements using slopes. They will be 1.8m to 4m wide to allow a wheelchair,” he said.
The pavements, built of granite, will not have barriers. “I have asked them to move all barriers like streetlights, transformers and junction boxes to a lane parallel to the foot path,” said Duraisamy.
The pavements, which have been designed for 71 bus route roads, will be even and of uniform width. “They will extend evenly from the beginning to the end of the road,” said a corporation official. “They will not be more than six inches high, making it easy for old people to get on and off,” said the official.
For a city with 448 bus route roads, which run for 353km, and more than 8,000km of interior roads, pavement lengths are dismal. “A bus route road needs to have uninterrupted footpaths on both sides,” says Raj Cherubal of Chennai City Connect. Bus route roads such as Nungambakkam High Road have tea shops on pavements. MG Road in Besant Nagar does not have a pavement on one side.
In response to an Right to Information Act application filed by nonprofit organization Transparent Chennai last year, the corporation said only 829km of the 2,149km of roads in the city have pavements. This was based on the data collected from the erstwhile 10 zones.
The corporation laid new pavements with anti-skid tiles on Santhome High Road, Kamaraj Avenue, C P Ramaswamy Road, Wallajah Road and TTK Road. However, they are too narrow for two people to walk side by side and have been dug up often for civic work.
Experts say cities like Singapore and London have pavements on either side of interior roads. Every inch of road space however narrow needs to have space for people to walk.
source: http://www.articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Chennai / by Pratiksha Ramkumar, TNN / May 03rd, 2013