The new foot overbridge at the Chingrighata crossing of EM Bypass has not yet led to any reduction in pedestrians walking across the busy intersection, police officers said a little over a week after the chief minister inaugurated the structure.
While a section of pedestrians, including the Sector V-bound crowd and school kids, has started getting used to the foot overbridge, residents on either side of EM Bypass near the Chingrighata intersection have continued with the practice of walking across the road.
The overbridge has an escalator and a separate ramp for cycles.“There are two crossover points, close to one another, on the Bypass — one near Jal Vayu Vihar and the other at the Chingrighata intersection,” said a senior police officer.
“Pedestrian movement at the first point has remarkably reduced but has remained almost the same at the second because residents of Majherpara — who depend on the Sukantanagar market, on the other side of the road, for their daily needs — prefer to walk across the artery,” said an officer.
At the Salt Lake-end of the Chingrighata crossing, residents of Shanti Nagar, Sukanta Nagar and a few other colonies earn their living working as daily labourers in small manufacturing units along Canal South Road.
The labourers, who work in units that manufacture garments, plastic goods and glass items, walk across the Bypass at the Chingrighata intersection, resulting in snarls on both flanks of the Bypass.
“It doesn’t make sense to use the foot overbridge at the Jal Vayu Vihar-end, take a U-turn and reach either the markets or the water taps across the Chingrighata crossing every day. So most of us prefer to walk or cycle down the stretch,” said Prosenjit Das, a resident of Sukantanagar.
A detailed report drawn up by Kolkata police in November, while proposing to take over the control of the intersection from the Bidhannagar commissionerate, had pointed out that Chingrighata was a complex intersection.
Highlighting the complexities, the report cited north-south movement of vehicles and “heavy pedestrian crossover from a few major and minor roads, including the EM Bypass, Canal South Road, Chowlpatty Road, extension of Jal Vayu Vihar and Beleghata Main Road”.
The report had listed several challenges in managing traffic. A few were:
• Residents of Sukanta Nagar cross the intersection to fetch drinking water
• Every day, a considerable number of residents of Sukanta Nagar head to Beleghata for work
• The number of cyclists crossing the intersection has gone up manifold during the pandemic,
Based on the report, the urban development department has proposed construction of a pedestrian underpass at the crossing.