Delhi's much-hyped skywalk project, which was thrown open to public on Monday evening, seems like it is destined to be a bridge to nowhere than any lofty stairway to heaven. Forget down-to-earth objectives like helping pedestrians cross a city stretch notorious for its traffic quagmire.
Remember the fancy escalators which came up alongside Foot Over Bridges (FOBs) in the central Delhi area after the 2010 Commonwealth Games? They were supposed to be ready before the Games, but we shouldn't be over-ambitious, should we? After a few rains and short circuits, many had gone kaput. Or the rather luxurious sofas which the sundry authorities had installed at many South Delhi bus stops? Or the disastrously foolish Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor which left lakhs of commuters stuck in hour-long jams perpetually for years before it was dismantled? Well, add another one to the list.
The original plan, or at least what many Delhiites thought, was to provide pedestrians a means to tide over the notoriously difficult traffic at the pivotal ITO intersection which connects central Delhi to east Delhi and the old city. With a flyover to ease the traffic out of question due to pre-existing infrastructure, the next best thing was to have a pedestrian FOB at least—hundreds of thousands of people work in the many offices in and around ITO, from government departments to a medical college to many corporate and media houses.
Yet, the skywalk planners' focus, incredulously, was centred on commuters coming out of the Pragati Maidan metro station half-a-kilometre away from ITO. The primary structure of the walkway, canopy, kiosks and plaza are all centred from the station to the nearby road—a regular intersection which perhaps has less than half the traffic and pedestrian density of the actual ITO intersection ahead.
The skywalk presently leads to Tilak Marg on to Sikandra Road, all in the rarefied Lutyens Zone with low density of vehicles and people. Worse, except for the Supreme Court across the road, there aren't any other establishment big enough to warrant such a huge infrastructure project, the final cost pegged at Rs 54 crore.
Yet, half a kilometre ahead, as vehicles from three corners of the city, from New Delhi, Old Delhi and the densely populated east Delhi (which leads on to the highway to west UP), confluence at the traffic signals at ITO, thousands wait either inside their vehicles or outside on their feet, united only by their impatience. A walkway like this could have been the second best solution to this civic chockhold, after a flyover. Myopic urban planners, or perhaps a multiplicity of authorities, have put paid to that dream, like many other Tughlaq-ian measures.
As a sort of consolation prize, there is a separate skywalk on one side of the ITO intersection. It is still 400 metres away and does not serve the point where maximum number of people would be crossing over, which has the office complexes, including the high-rises of Delhi Police and Delhi Development Authority, on both sides. Once public attention moves away from the Delhi government versus urban development ministry spat over who gets the credit for the skywalk, we will probably finally realise that what we signed up for was nothing more than a walk in the clouds.