Ramp-age: When walking is a hazardous job

GURGAON: The hit-and-run accident in Palam Vihar last week in which a 67-year-old resident was critically injured after a car ran over her has underlined a grave problem common across cities and rampant in residential colonies here – house after house annexing road berms, leaving no defined space for walkers.
From ringfenced personal gardens to wide, sloping ramps, enclosures for generator sets and even guard rooms, encroachment of the space between road and house, which is meant for walking, come in all shapes and sizes across colonies.At some places, these encroachments have extended 10-15 feet from the boundaries of the houses, spanning across not just the berm but taking up a slice of the road too.
“It is difficult to walk in the colony. Most of the internal roads don’t have footpaths and the roadsides are encroached. It’s a major safety concern for residents,” Lajpat Gupta, a resident of F block in Palam Vihar, said.
On the evening of June 29, Rita Anand, editor of Civil Society magazine, was on her way to a park in the colony when a white Verna hit her and its driver sped away. The driver, employed with a family in Delhi, was arrested later in the week and got bail. Rita’s condition, according to her family, has improved but she is still in the ICU of a private hospital in the city.
Rita’s husband Umesh Anand, a veteran journalist and publisher of Civil Society, said encroachments of road shoulders were widespread and an extreme form of land-grabbing.
“Some residents have fenced the area, and some have extended their houses up to the roads. It means there is no space for people to walk, forcing them to walk on the road. This is not the first time that an accident has occurred due to the same exact reason. People drive at high speed. Why are authorities waiting for a tragedy to happen?” he asked.
“Many residents also park their car, thereby reducing the road space and making people vulnerable. It is a colony and people need to walk. I have been hit several times. I have personally requested them to remove these encroachments. I have asked them this – do you want someone to die at your door? Can you live with this? Why hasn’t the DTCP (department of town and country planning) given them a legal notice?” Anand added.
In technical terms, the area between houses and a road is called ‘right of way’ (RoW), where utilities such as sewer lines, stormwater drains, electricity lines and water pipelines lie. Encroachments in the form of concrete extensions topped up with tiles often disrupt these services too.
A berm is also an important grid separator, defining the road’s edges for motorists and a walker so that they don’t end up in each other’s paths. But in many internal roads, concrete extensions have merged with grey tar, giving the surface undesirable homogeneity.
Shweta, who lives in Palam Vihar’s B block, said people end up extending their houses in the name of beautification. “Not only is it a threat to pedestrians and cyclists, but it also leads to waterlogging as it chokes the drain network,” she said.
Among other places where scores of houses have eaten up the shoulders of internal roads are sectors 10 and 10A, 14, 21 and 21A, 22A, 23, 23A, 31 and 40. “Almost every other house in plotted colonies has extended their boundaries till the road. Encroachments along corner houses have created blind spots for commuters,” admitted Bhawani Shankar Tripathy, vice-president of the Sector 23A RWA.
Udayvir Yadav, former president of the Sector 10A RWA, alleged that nothing has been done to discourage encroachments in the past few years. “Why do the authorities want people to complain about their neighbours instead of taking action? Why can’t they just be proactive and take action against all who are flouting rules?” he said. “Apart from gardens and boundary walls, parked vehicles take up all the space available. We have filed complaints in the past, but these violations are widespread,” said Kalyan Singh Sharma, a resident of Sector 14.
Officials conceded there was a loophole in the rules that has helped people get away with illegal ramp extensions. “There is no clear specification on ramp designs, slope or depth in the Haryana Building Code,” said district town planner (enforcement) Manish Yadav. But, Yadav added, road berms are part of RoW and any kind of construction or fencing to develop gardens is “not allowed”. “While we have been taking action when we have received complaints, there have been no regular drives carried out by the department,” he added.