[sustran] Re: Pedestrian overpasses

[anant m]

Hi all, 

Thanks for this very useful conversation. I am an urban geographer with an interest in the politics of infrastructure, planning, economies of the street etc. So I follow debates like this with interest. 

Although not directly relevant to the questions at hand, the experience of Hyderabad, India with Foot Over Bridges (as pedestrian overpasses are known in this city). 

Following public furore over some ghastly accidents which killed school children and their grandparents, the Municipal Corporation of Hyderabad, India  launched an ambitious program of building Foot Overbridges through  BOT (Build Operate and Transfer Scheme). 

The private partners who took the opportunity saw FoBs as overhead advertising space and accordingly influenced decision makers to locate FoBs at vantage points along the roads where they will be visible to the largest number of motorists. In most places, this worked as an additional disincentive to pedestrians who were already reluctant to use the foot overbridges because of the effort involved in climbing up. Some of these were later pulled down because in any case, they came in the way of proposed flyovers (as the road overpasses for motor traffic are known in Hyderabad).  

The latest is that the Municipal Corporation is seriously considering putting in escalators on some of the foot overbridges to encourage more people to use them. The drama continues even as pedestrian fatality figures show no signs of going down. :(

The point I guess I am driving at is that municipal governments at least in India have all kinds of considerations for every bit of infrastructure that gets built.  I am sure that no planner would suggest that planning happens in an ideological vaccuum, or under perfectly sanitary conditions, but I am not sure exactly how and at what stage planners integrate politics into their critical praxis. 

Below is a link to a story which captures the complications that Foot Over Bridges ran into Hyderabad - protests from local businessmen and from providers of other infrastructures and services such as underground cables and pipelines!!. 

 http://www.hindu.com/2007/03/01/stories/2007030117500300.htm

anant

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 7:55 AM, Bert Fabian <bert.fabian at cai-asia.org> wrote: