The sidewalks in Viman Nagar are paved with good intentions by the civic body. But good intentions alone are not enough for their upkeep. Viman Nagar has more pedestrians than most other areas of the city, considering the predominantly high student population who do not own vehicles and therefore have to walk, pavements and sidewalks need to be functional. Most of the sidewalks in Viman Nagar are pitted with cracks, with paving blocks broken and missing in many places. Worse still, large stretches of sidewalks are inaccessible to pedestrians for two major reasons – taxis waiting for passengers are lined up on both sides of roads near the airport, and slum dwellers parking their two-wheelers on sidewalks. “I have stopped wearing my good shoes because they end up getting broken or damaged due to the rough surfaces of the pavements,” says Siddhee Satish, a student of SCMC who lives at the hostel, which is barely a kilometer from the college. Most students in the hostel walk to and from the college. The sidewalks and pavements are in a permanent state of disrepair. “At the end of the day, my shoes and clothes are covered in dust,” says Siddhee. But there are exceptions too. Not all of Viman Nagar’s pavements are like this. There are some places where there are wide, well-paved pavements that are a pleasure to walk on. One such is the road-crossing pavement at the traffic intersection near Lunkad Queensland on West Avenue road. Says Sayanta Sengupta, a student of SCMC, “There are some decent footpaths too, like those between Ganapati Chowk and Dorabjees, which is a relief, because traffic here is heavy and there are no traffic police on this stretch.” “Comparatively, however, there are more footpaths and sidewalks in Viman Nagar because it is a relatively new area of the city. But the footpaths must be usable,” observes Prof Vidyabhushan Arya, a long-time resident of Pune.
10 Jan 2022
Shruti Menon
