GHMC focuses on footpaths to enhance pedestrian safety

Presently, works with an estimated budget of Rs 21.07 crore are underway across the city.

Hyderabad: The right to walk is often a casualty in infrastructure planning which has more focus on streamlining the movement of vehicles while pedestrians get a raw deal.

That has been changing in the city with the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) stepping forward to enhance the safety of pedestrians and developing footpaths at all feasible locations. Presently, works with an estimated budget of Rs 21.07 crore are underway across the city.

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The civic body for the year 2022-23 has earmarked an outlay of Rs 31.11 crore for the construction of footpaths and among them, works with Rs 10.04 crore have already been completed, while the rest are in progress.

In recent times, the GHMC engineering wing has been seeking to provide safer walking spaces along the busy road corridors which teem with vehicles and this has resulted in the length of footpaths increasing considerably, particularly in the last eight years.

While the total length of the footpaths in GHMC limits was 452 km during the year 2014-15, the same has gone up to 816.90 km by 2021. More works are in progress to further expand the footpath network for the convenience of pedestrians. This rapid increase in the footpath length was achieved with the GHMC spending Rs 61.87 crore for the construction and maintenance of footpaths from 2019-20 to 2021-22.

An official with the GHMC engineering wing said a series of measures have been incorporated for the pedestrians and these include the construction of new pavements, maintenance of the 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 safeguard the footpaths, the civic body in coordination with the Police Department has been engaged in cracking down on the encroachments and freeing up the spaces meant for pedestrians. Several footpath encroachments have recently been demolished in the south zone including at Santosh Nagar, Salala, Edi Bazar, Hafeez Baba Nagar, Bahadurpura, and Kishan Bagh.