Neglected walkway linking Indiranagar-Domlur restored after social media post by a Canadian man

The long-neglected pedestrian walkway linking Domlur and Indiranagar in east Bengaluru has finally been restored and opened for the public after a Canadian man posted a video highlighting the sad state of the walkway.

The 200-m pedestrian stretch was revived in a joint effort by the BBMP and citizen collective Bangalore Walks as part of Project Walkaluru. The pedestrian walkway had been lying neglected for over a decade with poor maintenance.

Caleb Friesen, a Canadian man, had posted a video showing the struggle involved in taking the walkway, triggering discussion on social media platforms. Soon, a restoration initiative was taken up.

“BBMP and Bangalore Walks have been in collaboration since December 2023 and have been working on restoring walkways primarily in the city’s CBD area, including M.G. Road, Vasanth Nagar, Hosur Road, and Richmond Road. This was a critical connection we were always keen on,” said Snehal R., East Zonal Commissioner, BBMP.

“The stretch had overgrowth of shrubs, which had to be trimmed; absence of streetlights for the pedestrians; excess debris along the way; and most critically, the water clogging where the outlets were covered with silt, which had to be handled,” she said.

She further emphasised that it was a joint contribution, where BBMP primarily carried out the cleaning process as part of its regular maintenance expenditure quota, with both the forest and solid waste management departments working cohesively together.

While Bangalore Walks provided for the aesthetics of the walkway, including painting the electrical engineering wing, it took charge of mending the streetlights.

“If we had to map 40 to 50 km of interconnected footpaths in Bengaluru, this stretch was a bottleneck junction, which had a pause in the midst of a highway, creating a node, and was one of the interrelated problems,” said Arun Pai, founder of Bangalore Walks.

“The work was a quick response to a social media post, but that was a final push for months of restoration that is being carried out at multiple points in the city; it was neither overnight nor novel,” he said.