Accessibility on the road

Those who are in the field of disability rights, they will understand when I am mentioning about accessibility. But for other’s benefit let me give you a brief on accessibility.

Have you seen a particular insurance company’s ad on TV where a young man sitting on a usual chair gets transformed into a wheel chair with one leg gone? Today you are going to a cinema and you never think of the stairs. God forbid, tomorrow if you meet with an accident and to save your life doctors ampute one of your leg and then you want to go to the cinema – would you ignore those stairs? Certainly not- your access to that building is gone if they do not have a lift. So suddenly with loss of your leg you become a lesser mortal and you do not have access to many places including the roads of our country.

If you are on wheel chair, can you go on our pavements? Its a joke. Is not it? With almost a foot high our pavements do not give access to the wheel chair users at any place where they can get into the pavement and then come down from the pavement. Being an advocate of equal access for all, I always used to fume and fret on this issue.

When I went from place to place in UK and Switzerland I was amazed to see how accessible the roads are! The pavements are only a bricks height and at each pedestrian crossing the pavement gives a cutting at the level of the road for a wheel chair user to give equal access to the road.

Then onwards I was wondering why we cannot have the same system in our country. Surely that will consume less brick and less resource. Why our planners cannot think of such a small thing? Back in country I was again fuming at the lack of thinking on the part of the road planners!! And one day while travelling by our office vehicle, I actually aired my thoughts to my colleague Raj, who was behind the wheels.

Lo, I got the ‘reality in India’ ‘gyan’ to support the planners!!! Raj’s wise comments was - if the pavement height comes down to that level, then instead of ensuring accessibility to all pedestrians it will drive out all space for them with scooterists, motor bikers, cyclists and even auto rickshaws accessing those strips to cross the other vehicles. Our planners are at least ensuring that pedestrians do have some space!

Wow Raj! How true!! With the fate of BRT strip meant for cyclists, I have stopped complaining. Its not only BRT, while travelling from Malviya Nagar to Katwaria Sarai I actually have seen bikers and scooterists getting on to the pavement where it is broken and getting off it where again due to breakage and piled mud it gives a slope like access to the road.

I am now wiser – about the knowledge of our planners. No, no, not about their knowledge on accessible design but about the road sense of us, the Indian commuters!