The right to walk is frequently sacrificed in infrastructure planning, which is more concerned with streamlining vehicle movement while pedestrians struggle.
That is changing in the city, with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) taking steps to improve pedestrian safety and develop footpaths in all feasible locations. Currently, work with a budget of Rs 21.07 crore is being carried out across the city.
For the financial year 2022-23, the civic body has earmarked an outlay of Rs 31.11 crore for the construction of footpaths, of which works with Rs 10.04 crore have already been completed, with the remainder still in progress.
In recent years, the GHMC engineering wing has sought to provide safer walking spaces along busy road corridors teeming with vehicles, resulting in a significant increase in the length of footpaths, particularly in the last eight years.
While the total length of footpaths within GHMC limits was 452 km in 2014-15, the same has increased to 816.90 km by 2021. More work is being done to expand the footpath network for the benefit of pedestrians. The GHMC spent Rs 61.87 crore on footpath construction and maintenance from 2019-20 to 2021-22, resulting in this rapid increase in footpath length.
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According to a GHMC engineering wing official, a number of measures have been implemented for pedestrians, including the construction of new pavements, maintenance of existing ones, and enforcement activity to prevent them from being occupied.
“Development of footpaths has been taken up on all four sides of the city. For instance, in the eastern part of the city, within the L B Nagar zone alone, in 2022-23, Rs 0.47 crore was sanctioned for the development of footpaths. Among them, we have already completed works with Rs 0.16 crore and the balance works are under progress,” he said.
To protect the footpaths, the civic body, in collaboration with the Police Department, has been cracking down on encroachments and freeing up space for pedestrians. Several footpath encroachments in the south zone have recently been demolished, including in Santosh Nagar, Salala, Edi Bazar, Hafeez Baba Nagar, Bahadurpura, and Kishan Bagh.
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