Road dividers a bane for pedestrians

Mid-block crossing, table-top crossing being explored to slow down vehicles

It is a 900-metre stretch in Nallagandla, it is a 700-metre stretch in Masab Tank and it is a kilometre long stretch near Suchitra Junction. These are the ‘lengths’ that citizens have to go to, literally, to cross over to the other side of the road. At Nallagandla, a row of apartments is on one side and a row of big retail outlets on the other. In Masab Tank, the Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital is on one side and the parking bay for regional transport buses on the other. These long stretches with speeding traffic are divvying up the city and making the city more pedestrian-unfriendly. “Traffic was slow here and people used to cross over to the shops on the other side. Now, the traffic speed has gone up,” says Suresh, who has seen the Nallagandla area change over the past four years with the ringside view of his coconut stall. On Monday, a woman tumbled at the road divider as she tried to cross the road in the company of other women. A thin wire has been strung up to stop people from crossing over.