Many residents living on both sides of the Islamabad Expressway, seemed to have no interest in using overhead bridges, built on various points to facilitate them.
Despite warnings by the police and traffic instructions, the pedestrians hardly take the extra effort to climb the bridges and instead just walk across the road. “Pedestrians are generally reluctant to use the nearby overhead bridges,” an old man said, “When I’m in a hurry, I don’t care. I have to reach office.”
An official of the Islamabad traffic police said that they were doing their best to educate pedestrians, and different signboards have been installed to guide them.
“I agree that most of the pedestrians prefer short-cuts, avoid using these overhead bridges and consequently face road accidents,” he said. Several fatal and non-fatal road accidents have occurred on the Islamabad Expressway due to the negligence of pedestrians who jump on the road out of nowhere, the official added. He said that the police would continue their efforts to educate pedestrians.
He requested the people to use overhead bridges as they were erected for their safety.
The expressway is one of the busiest roads in the city as most of the traffic coming from Lahore uses it to enter Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
Ali Furqan, a car owner said, “The government has spent millions of rupees to facilitate people living on both sides of the expressway for their safety, but most of the pedestrians are not using that facility”. Muhammad Arshad, a public transport driver, said, “Most people do not use the [overhead] bridge for crossing the road and disturb the flow of the traffic.”
Naeem Asghar, a government employee, said that he always uses these overhead bridges as they have been installed to facilitate public. A spokesman of the Capital Development Authority (CDA) said that a proposal was being considered to construct a six-foot high safety wall along the Islamabad Expressway to discourage pedestrians from crossing it other than from designated places, but due to a financial crunch, the plan has been dropped. Overhead bridges would also be installed at the Zero Point Interchange soon.
