Crowd-sourced footpath design gets BBMP aye

Bellandur Jothege (Bellandur Together), a citizen group in this village-turned-IT hotbed, is taking things into its hands to better road conditions, especially for pedestrians. It has put together a crowdsourced blueprint and approached the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike for financial support.

Titled "Bellandur Walks", the proposal that envisages worldclass infrastructure for pedestrians has been split into two parts. While the first design covers 28 km of road length, the citizen group has come up with a more detailed blueprint for a 4-km stretch between Bellandur (Central Mall) and Sarjapur Road (Wipro corporate office) via the Iblur junction.

"The BBMP has always given priority to central parts of Bengaluru while 110 villages which were added to the municipal corporation a decade ago still resemble villages. Even the roads identified for a makeover under TenderSURE projects are in the core area. Hence, we the citizens decided to design roads, taking ideas from Indian Road Congress guidelines and TenderSURE," said Naresh Sadasivan, a citizen activist.


The project, he said, has been designed keeping in mind the financial constraints of the BBMP. "People are forced to think twice before deciding to walk on the current stretch as the stretch on Sarjapur Road is not at all pedestrian-friendly. While there is no footpath on one side of the road, on the other stretch, the pavements are in bad condition and some portions are occupied by shopkeepers," Sadasivan added.

With no elected representative and officers in the corporation taking efforts to make the stretch pedestrian-friendly, Bellandur Jothege decided to redesign the stretch. The association estimates that around 80,000 people commute daily from Central Mall to Wipro office. More than 5.5 lakh people work in offices situated between Kaikondrahalli (Wipro office) and Marathahalli (Prestige Tech Park). Besides housing over 500 small and mid-size shops, the stretch is witnessing rampant growth as more tech firms are sto open their branches in the area.

The BBMP has responded to the proposal positively. Mayor R Sampath Raj said the corporation is willing to take up the work. "I have instructed our officials to prepare a cost estimate for the project based on the specifications given by the citizen groups. I will present the proposal to the committee and get it approved," he told ET.

Parameshwaraiah, chief engineer of the Mahadevapura zone of BBMP, said officers are working on the nitty-gritty of the proposal. "We have a meeting on Wednesday," he added.