Gurugram: You can do a lot on these footpaths, except walk

GURUGRAM: Every morning, Chhavi Das (42), who works as a cook, grits her teeth and walks 3km from her home in Wazirabad village to a condominium at Club Drive in Sector 53, her place of employment.
The part she dreads is St Thomas Marg, where businesses that are run from the footpath have left no space for pedestrians. Shops, carts, advertising boards on one side, moving vehicles on the other, she treads a fine path. A judgement error of a few inches could lead to a passing car, bike or auto grazing her, or worse.

“There’s a wide footpath but no space to walk on it. So you have to walk on the road,” says Chhavi, who is among hundreds of pedestrians who frequent St Thomas Marg daily. The irony is that the area, with Golf Course Road nearby, is an employment hub and better off than most other parts of the city in civic amenities.
At the turn towards Golf Course Road from St Thomas Marg, once the market has petered out, the pavement still can’t be reclaimed. At the bend towards One Horizon Centre, parked vehicles next to a liquor vend block the pavement. Further ahead, in the direction of the Sector 42-43 Rapid Metro station, the footpath is obstructed by government signage and abandoned police barricades. The stretch after that is overrun by food carts.
This is a scene that repeats itself across the city, especially in the busy areas and important transit points where more people walk. Between IFFCO Chowk and Huda City Centre, one of the busiest stretches not just for vehicular traffic but pedestrians because of the metro station, the pavements are infringed by vendors selling wares, broken tree branches and even traffic lights. But there is a bigger problem should you try walking here — a honking two-wheeler rider who wants you of the way and feels more entitled to the pavement than you. Particularly in the rush hours, bikers and scooters simply take over the pavements. Sukanya Malik, a resident of Delhi who works at a private company barely half a kilometre from IFFCO Chowk, doesn’t even try to walk. She takes an auto or an e-rickshaw.

“The first few days after I joined, I tried walking but was forced off the footpath by twowheelers riders. A man on a motorcycle nearly rammed into me from behind. After that, I decided to spend Rs 20-30 ratherthan brave walking on such a footpath again,” she said.
It’s no different near the mini secretariat, the seat of the government in the city. After he was done with his work at the mini secretariat, Nilesh Tripathi, a Patel Nagar resident, stood on the road, waiting for his brother to pick him up, stepping forward and backward to make way for vehicles passing by. The footpath had disappeared behind a queue of parked vehicles. “I don’t know how anyone can expect pedestrians to spot the pavement here. If I go and stand on the footpath, my brother won’t be able to spot me,” he said. But it’s not just parked vehicles. The footpath is home to a few kirana stores up ahead.
Along Golf Course Road Extension, meanwhile, where the newer sectors are taking shape, footpaths are either heavily encroached or inaccessible because of overgrown shrubs. Niti Sharma, a resident of Sector 50, said, “All that the authorities have to do is trim the vegetation to make the footpaths usable for pedestrians. They have spent so much money making the footpaths, which then get damaged or encroached and pedestrians put their lives in danger by walking on roads,” she added.
“Removing encroachments is the mandate of the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG), Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA), and Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran (HSVP). We will be seeking a report from them about footpaths that have been encroached since it is a safety concern. Based on that report, we will ask them to remove the encroachments,” said Nishant Kumar Yadav, deputy commissioner of Gurgaon.