Roads connect places, peoples and offer pathways for the carriage of goods and services for the needs of society. Thus by their very nature roads satisfy a multiplicity of needs. Apart from that in traffic terminology roads are defined as being multi-modal. The meaning of this is that many kinds of vehicles use the roads. This is more so in the context of countries like India. While in the US or Europe roads are designed for pedestrians and cyclists particularly in urban areas, passenger vehicles – cars and 2-wheelers, buses and trucks of varying load capacities and forms that carry goods, in India we have to additionally cater to bullock carts, hand-pulled carts, 3-wheelers of various shapes and sizes and maybe still some horse-drawn carriages & buggies.
By the nature of our society and our economy the operatives of the varied classes of locomotion will demand and secure their rights to use the road. Thus we see roads becoming multi-modal having to deliver the rights of its use to the many varieties of users. The pedestrian in this scheme of things happens to be a very important category of road user. If you look by way of right it was the pedestrian who was there first and because of his need the road was formed. So you cannot deny the pedestrian the right of use of the road.
In places around India you will find that the pedestrian can be classified with the most vociferous, if not militant, being from Calcutta (now Kolkata) and the most docile from Madras (now Chennai). Goa does not figure anywhere on this scale since Goa does not believe in pedestrians.
This is more so in the latest context that is over the last three years, if you look at our road planning, it is believed that pedestrians do not exist in Goa. Otherwise we would not have had this spree of road widening that is happening all over Goa with not a thought being given to how people, the pedestrians, will cross the roads.
About pavements, there has been a spree again for constructing pavements all over Goa which one cannot deny. But these do not really lend to their use by pedestrians because they are a little too high and one needs to bring along one’s step-up ladder to climb on to them particularly for senior citizens and those with knee trouble.
While the stretch of the NH17 highway running from the Gauri Petrol Pump to the Jeevottam Math in Porvorim has no pavements on the left side and pedestrians including school children have to walk on the side of the highway with their lives literally in their hands. However, the plight of pedestrians of Goa, particularly in Porvorim, is so miserable and hence this is a humble request to consider them while building roads and on existing roads assist them by providing traffic signals so that they are able to cross with the least risk to life and limb. The road that was once of the people, by the people and for the people; has now become of the vehicles, by the vehicles and for the vehicles.
