Editorial
Our vanishing footpaths and overbridges
The authorities must take corrective steps
THE images of occupied or commandeered footpaths carried by this newspaper lately are testimony to the misery which citizens often undergo in the nation's capital. One can put up a reasonable argument that the level of encroachment on public roads and streets has been of a mind-boggling kind. Worse has been the inability or reluctance of the city authorities to take the corrective measures that can help mitigate the difficulties pedestrians face as they try to negotiate the roads. In places like the New Market area, Motijheel, Gulistan and Elephant Road, not to speak of others, footpaths have as good as disappeared because of the rampant activities of hawkers. As a matter of fact, the usual picture these days is one of hawkers and their wares occupying entire pavements while pedestrians are forced to move, almost stealthily and in rather shaky manner, between running vehicles on the roads.
Footpaths are not occupied by vendors and hawkers alone. There are innumerable instances of individuals dumping building materials --- cement, stones, bricks and rods --- along entire stretches of pavements with little care to the discomfort they are putting people to. Despite the fact that roads and pavements are public property and therefore cannot be claimed for private purposes, there is hardly any effort made by the city authorities or the law enforcers to bring such lawbreakers to task. As if pavements were not enough, the foot overbridges in the city too are now home to hawkers, a reality that is a bad impediment to the movement of citizens. When you add to all this chaos the haphazard manner in which buses and trucks use the roads, you certainly know what pandemonium is all about. And let us not forget that every time there is a long queue of vehicles on the roads or there is a traffic snarl, some motor cycle riders think nothing of getting on to the pavements with their bikes and ploughing through, to the irritation of pedestrians. All such activities go on day after day and yet there is no one in the city administration to put things in order.
The problems faced by pedestrians apart, there are the problems which pedestrians themselves create on the roads. Most of them are prone to crossing the roads in ways that violate traffic regulations. Where there is a foot overbridge for use by them, a vast majority of them generally choose to ignore them. The result is jaywalking, which is a clear danger, both for the people indulging in it and for the vehicles using the roads.
Will someone in authority care to notice?
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