Donning bright white lab coats, students dart across the road in front of St. John’s Medical College and Hospital in Koramangala. Lunch time has descended upon them and they are making a dash for the canteen on the other side of the road. The median is stunted. Just a facile jump would do. Given this, a foot overbridge (FOB), 50 metres from the hospital gate, stands ignored. Hunger pangs could readily be blamed for this risk-taking behaviour. But while on a full stomach, students have brushed the FOB off curtly as if it were an uninvited guest.
Built around five years ago for the benefit of students and patients, this facility near Gate 2 of the hospital remains underutilised, being used only when the medical students take the stairs to film short videos. Even a slightly older segment of the pedestrian population gives the FOB the cold shoulder. And seniors give the FOB a wide berth, as it is divested of its lifts.
People use the foot over bridges near a metro station at Majestic through a lift in Bengaluru.
| Photo Credit:
Sudhakara Jain
There is no dearth of underused FOBs in Bengaluru. On the same road, three kilometres away in Jakasandra, an FOB is a picture of desertion and neglect, its metal walkway displaying signs of corrosion.
Sometimes, FOB-avoiding behaviour is fuelled by the lack of lifts or escalators or the lack of faith in them, when they are functioning. In a post on Instagram earlier this year, the Bengaluru City Police described the harrowing experience of a 50-year-old woman being stuck in a lift near the skywalk at Nagarabhavi bus stand in Chandra Layout police station jurisdiction. A citizen had called the emergency helpline of the Bengaluru City Police Namma 112 seeking help. The iron wires on top of the lift had to be yanked out to rescue the woman.
According to Bangalore Traffic Police, a total of 4,784 road accidents cases were reported in 2024, in which 893 people were killed and 4,052 people were injured. Of this, more than 200 killed involved pedestrians. Did some of those pedestrians lose their life because they decided in favour of crossing the road without the help of an FOB nearby, only because it was not user-friendly?
A vast majority of humanity wants to expend minimal energy while seeking to have its goals realised. That is an umbrella truism and it covers FOBs as well. An FOB, even that which comes complete with lifts or escalators, looks uninviting if one has to cover considerable ground to reach it. Therefore the location of an FOB matters as much (if not more) as its user-friendly, physical features.
FOBs and skywalks are often proposed as indispensable aids to safe pedestrian crossing in any metro, but the ground reality proves otherwise.
Of the 82 skywalks in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) limits, more than 20 are under different stages of completion. As per data shared by the Traffic Engineering Cell of BBMP, a majority of the facilities that came up after 2007 were provided with a lift or escalator. A good number of the operational FOBs are built under public private partnership and come with a close circuit television camera and watchman.
But the current status of these skywalks leave a lot to be desired. Officials say the big challenge they face includes acts of vandalism on lifts. Repairing them following every such act is an avoidable cost to the recurring expenditure of maintaining these facilities.
More infrastructure projects
A vast chunk of the budget proposed by BBMP was directed towards infrastructure development — skywalks featuring in them. Before fresh tenders are called for constructing new skywalks, can various stakeholders involved in such projects keep behavioural insights in mind from the design stage to increase the patronage of these facilities?
Prakash Sharma, a Behavioural Strategist and co-founder of 1001 Stories, says the challenges in using skywalks are behavioural, socio-cultural and holistic.
A foot overbridge at Cantonment Railway Station in Bengaluru. Experts say civic body must regularly study factors that make certain skywalks popular or why some are avoided.
| Photo Credit:
J. Allen Egenuse
If these three can be better understood when designing such infrastructure projects, then it can enhance design, user experience, improve safety and help in promoting desired behaviours.
Talking about how skywalks can enhance the safety of pedestrians in a metro, Prakash says it is easier to get people to use them, if comfort is the hook, rather than safety.
“For instance, skywalks should be aesthetic. The steps should not look intimidating when you design such a project. The walls of the escalator, especially on the walkways, should not be covered from top to bottom — openness signals safety. One also needs clear nudges to inform the public that an FOB is located within a certain distance.”
He suggested making the access points leading to the skywalks appealing. “Finally, people interpret things in context — an FOB doesn’t make sense and will be ignored in the absence of the larger context of ample walking spaces and usable, decent footpaths,” says Prakash.
In the past, The Ugly Indians fixed black spots near skywalks leading to Old Airport Road, Marathahalli and Domlur.
Design standards
Arun Pai, who along with Deepesh Agarwal initiated the #BLRFootpath Challenge in 2024 to rate footpaths across the city and flag any issue, positions an FOB as a component in the larger pedestrian infrastructure and a solution created for faster and safer traffic movement.
“In many localities, FOBs block the footpath, and the area below the FOB stairs is used as a mini-dump”
Arun Pai#BLRFootpath Challenge
“We are asking civic authorities to make pedestrians the focus of our planning. Today it is an afterthought and FOB is an even bigger afterthought. FOBs are built after the footpath is made, so we need standards while designing such facilities so that such infrastructure projects do not block movement of people,” says Arun.
A good footpath should not be ruined by constructing an FOB. “In many localities, FOBs block the footpath, and the area below the FOB stairs is used as a mini-dump,” says Arun.
Officials from the traffic engineering cell say a need analysis is done with multiple stakeholders, including traffic police and citizen groups, before deciding on the location of a skywalk. At many arterial roads where skywalks are provided, the civic administration also makes it a point to increase the height of the median so as to prevent people from darting across the road.
Proposal to GBA
Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Karthik Reddy said that the Bengaluru Traffic Police have submitted a proposal to the Greater Bengaluru Authority (GBA) for construction of 78 skywalks across the city. These locations were identified based on areas where pedestrians currently take 20 to 30 seconds to cross the road. At such points, vehicular traffic often has to stop for 200 to 300 metres, leading to congestion. The idea behind the proposal is that building skywalks at these specific locations could reduce traffic slowdowns caused by pedestrian crossings.
Some of the key areas where the traffic police have suggested skywalks include ITPL Road, Outer Ring Road, Varthur to Old Airport Road, Whitefield Main Road, Cubbon Road, Kanakapura Road, Sarjapur Road, Bannerghatta Main Road, Dr. Rajkumar Road, among other key areas.
However, Reddy clarified that the Traffic Police’s role is limited to identifying problem areas and that they do not handle or suggest on the engineering or design aspects of the skywalks. Their concern is strictly the congestion caused by pedestrian crossings and how it could potentially be eased through the construction of skywalks.
Officials from the GBA, including one of the zonal engineers, noted that the proposal has not yet been in discussions. “One of the reasons is that building skywalks involves financial implications for the GBA, which prefers to construct such projects through a public-private partnership (PPP) model. In a PPP model, private partners are responsible for funding, design, and construction. Since the proposal is still at an early stage, it has not yet reached the level where design or construction decisions have been made,” the official added.
At-grade crossing
But are FOBs really the best option for pedestrian crossing?
Those working on transport and development policies are of the view that the best possible manner in which pedestrians can cross a road is by using at-grade crossings that have safety-enhancing measures firmly tucked in place. For, climbing the stairs of a FOB or a subway calls for an extra effort even for the young and nimble, let alone seniors.
“We should not look for vehicle-centric development. If a city cannot provide a table top crossings then at least go for half subways”S. Velmurugan head, Traffic Engineering and Safety Division, Central Road Research Institute, New Delhi
S. Velmurugan, chief scientist and head of Traffic Engineering and Safety Division, Central Road Research Institute, New Delhi, says conventional skywalks and FOBs take longer time to cross therefore at-grade or speed table or table top crossings must be preferred.
“We should not look for vehicle-centric development. If a city cannot provide a table top crossings then at least go for half subways,” says Velmurugan and requests new cities to consider half subways. In this, the design seeks to get around the problem of having to climb a long flight of stairs by reducing the number of steps. He says this is cost-effective because lifts involve periodic maintenance and the continuing cost of running them is not needed. However, this design has not taken off in a major way.
Velmurugan also cites the examples of Mumbai where the use of such facilities is commendable. He also cites the example of Surat where the private public partnership (PPP) model has worked.
Experts say the civic body must regularly study factors that make certain skywalks popular or why some are avoided. The facilities that are not popular in an area owing to location or poor facilities must be tweaked to incorporate amenities that are favoured by pedestrians. If retrofitting or shifting location of skywalks is an option then it must be tried. FOBs may after all remain a big necessity.
(With additional inputs by Rishita Khanna)
