Plight of the pedestrians

Dehradun: Once known as a ‘walker-friendly’ city where majority of the people preferred to walk instead of commuting on two-wheeler or car, Dehradun roads are fast becoming less user-friendly for pedestrians now-a-days.
With majority of footpaths encroached and vehicle population on city roads growing at an unprecedented rate, the pedestrian infrastructure in Dehradun is in a dismal state with no place left for the citizen to tread on foot.
Not only Dehradun, other districts such as Udham Singh Nagar and Haridwar are also turning out to be a nightmare for the pedestrians.
In 2018, 146 pedestrians lost their lives in road mishaps in Uttarakhand while 61 people were killed in the first three months of 2019.
When contacted, Dehradun superintendent of police (SP) Traffic Prakash Chandra told TOI, “Police have been making efforts to make city roads pedestrian-friendly. Drives are carried out from time-to-time to remove illegal encroachments from pavements and footpaths. Besides, we also undertake campaigns to create awareness among motorists regarding pedestrians’ safety.”
Incidentally, in a walkability survey carried out by Gati Foundation, 60% of the total respondents rated the pedestrian infrastructure as bad and very bad in the city. The survey adopted the global walkability method to measure the walkability index of the city.
According to Anoop Nautiyal of Gati Foundation, the survey was conducted across 12 prime locations and sought opinions of 200 residents, bringing out the common issues faced by people travelling on foot. “In Dehradun, only 35% people walk which is less than the average walkers in other cities (55%),” he pointed out. The study also found that wider and level footpaths were seen as the first priority of pedestrians. Moreover, the zebra crossings meant for pedestrians to cross roads are rarely used in Dehradun.
Most residents say that the city is not pedestrian-friendly due to increased vehicular population on roads and lack of footpaths across the state capital. Ankit Sharma, a student of engineering said that many people would prefer to walk if the infrastructure was suitable. “I prefer to walk if the destination is nearby. But I avoid walking long distances as motorists seldom care for pedestrians and there is always a danger of being hit by them.”
Ayushi Batra, a student, who goes for morning walk every day, added, “Quality infrastructure for pedestrians is the need of the hour. Good roads with wide footpaths are necessary to bring back the culture of walking in the city as is the case in Europe.”
Dehradun also lacks foot-over-bridges and subways for pedestrians to cross busy junctions. When queried on what is being done by civic agencies to address the situation, municipal commissioner Vinay Shankar Pandey said, “In order to make city roads pedestrian-friendly, we have recently removed illegal encroachments from footpaths between Mussoorie diversion and Silvercity. We are also removing encroachments on pavements in other parts of the city.”