[sustran] Re: PMC's feeder service plan get WB boost

[Vinay Baindur]

Bangalore city corporation has just prepared a budget today which proposes
to have a no of subways for pedestrians

The issue becomes who gets priority human or car?

We are soon getting converted to a car city which will somehow not be for
pedestrians, cyclist or other NMT

Vinay


On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:37 PM, Madhav Badami, Prof. <
madhav.g.badami at mcgill.ca> wrote:

> Dear Vinay,
>
> Thanks very much for your posting. It certainly is important to ensure easy
> and safe pedestrian access to BRT and public transit. And indeed, there
> might be certain situations in which a pedestrian over-bridge or under-pass
> may be called for. However, I fear a trend toward over-bridges and
> under-passes or subways as the means to provide pedestrian access in Indian
> cities.
>
> What we need is not a few pedestrian over-bridges or subways, at such
> phenomenal expense, but for pedestrians (and cyclists) to be able to cross
> roads conveniently and safely, at grade, at tens of thousands of places, and
> to make it possible for them to do so at low cost. This is precisely how
> this end is achieved in Montreal, where I happen to live, by means of the
> simple expedient of the zebra crossing and the traffic light. I am in fact
> having a hard time trying to recall where the pedestrian over-bridges are in
> this city (there are no more than a handful).
>
> Apart from the unattractiveness and very limited utility -- from the point
> of view of pedestrians -- of a small number of pedestrian over-bridges or
> subways (which is what you would get with the meagre budgets allocated for
> "pedestrianization"), there is a more fundamental issue -- underlying the
> notion of pedestrian over-bridges and subways is the assumption that
> automobile traffic is primary (and something which pedestrians should not
> disrupt).
>
> What we need most of all is to begin to think of feet (the standard fitment
> with which all of us come into the world) as the most important travel mode,
> and walking as the fundamental basis of urban transport (or more precisely,
> accessibility) policy, and not merely as a "feeder" service for BRT or
> whatever, or even as merely "non-motorized" transport; and finally, to stop
> being spellbound by needlessly fancy and expensive technological means to
> achieve simple ends.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Madhav
>
>
> ************************************************************************
>
> "As for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it."
> Antoine de Saint-Exupery
>
> Madhav G. Badami, PhD
> School of Urban Planning and McGill School of Environment
> Associate Director of Graduate Affairs, McGill School of Environment
> McGill University
> Macdonald-Harrington Building
> 815 Sherbrooke Street West
> Montreal, QC, H3A 2K6, Canada
>
> Phone: 514-398-3183
> Fax: 514-398-8376; 514-398-1643
> URLs: www.mcgill.ca/urbanplanning
> www.mcgill.ca/mse
> e-mail <http://www.mcgill.ca/mse%0Ae-mail>: madhav.badami at mcgill.ca
>
>
>
>
>
>
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