Hyderabad: From Lakdi-ka-Pul to Jubilee Hills, from Nampally’s railway crowds to Abids’ shopping lanes, the story on Hyderabad’s footpaths is the same: built in patches, blocked in most and abandoned by evening. Pedestrians across the city say they have stopped expecting a footpath to actually be walkable and have started planning their commute around the main road instead.
Under Indian Roads Congress guidelines, a footpath must offer a clear walking width of at least 1.8 metres in residential areas and 2.5 metres in commercial ones, free of hawkers, parked vehicles and other obstructions. Siasat.com walked five localities end to end, and none met that standard.
Lakdi-ka-Pul to Banjara Hills: A stop-and-go journey
Near the Lakdi-ka-Pul Metro Station and the CID office, the footpath is wide and walkable. But it does not last.
As the road climbs onto the bridge, the path narrows and steepens, and by night it becomes a deterrent rather than a walkway. “It reeks of urine, and I’m not comfortable walking here,” Sagar, a hotel employee in his late 20s, told Siasat.com. It was past 9 pm and he was crossing on the road itself. Locals say the area behind the bridge sees frequent public urination after dark.
Past the bridge, near Rayalaseema Ruchulu, the footpath recovers briefly, as it does near the Saifabad Police Station. Beyond the station, hotels and canteens spill onto it, and public toilets sit on the pavement itself. “Women especially avoid walking past them. Nobody wants to walk through that smell,” said Seema, an office assistant who catches her bus opposite the Municipal Administration and Urban Development (MAUD) office. Most people, she said, step onto the road.
Closer to AC Guards, past the bus stops and a cluster of restaurants, the path turns patchy. “The footpath doesn’t even start smoothly. It’s broken, littered and overgrown right where it should begin,” said a daily commuter in his 30s who did not want to be named. Dustbins, cars outside a showroom and vehicles outside a State Bank of India (SBI) branch take the rest.
At Masab Tank, the pavement turns into a marketplace, with hawkers selling everything from pots to paan and a photocopy shop squeezing pedestrians into a single lane, beside railings that seem to be there for decoration. “There’s a railing, but I don’t know what it’s protecting people from. The footpath itself is full of random things, everything except space to walk,” said Noor, a fine arts student at Jawaharlal Nehru Architecture and Fine Arts University (JNAFAU).
Nearer the signal, the footpath is cleaner, but tree pits cut into the middle of it, and outside 555 Restaurant, thick tree trunks and two-wheelers from a bike showroom cover the rest. “This is already a very dangerous junction to cross, and the lack of a footpath and bikes on it makes it difficult for us to navigate,” 25-year-old Aanchal told Siasat.com, crossing with a friend to catch a bus.
From there, the pavement changes hands every few hundred metres. Poles outside Aqeeq restaurants leave room for at most two people before crockery shops use them as a portico.
Past the Masab Tank bus stop, it narrows to a single lane again, doubles as parking for Kingston Hospital and breaks at Dine Hill restaurant’s parking ramp. Near Balaji Grand Bazaar and Banjara Function Hall, two can walk abreast until a puncture shop’s tyres and a paan stall take over.
The footpath returns near Bajaj Electronics, but disappears again where a row of banks begins, as that stretch is used for parking. Near Hamed Khan Kunta, or Banjara Lake, it stops halfway. It picks up again past the lake, only to be taken over by sheds, a transformer and hawkers.
On the opposite lane, near Virinchi Hospital, a woman in her mid-30s described the daily negotiation. “The footpath is too narrow. If a person is coming from the other side, one of us has to step aside. We carry bags, sometimes we’re a little heavier built, and there just isn’t room for two people to pass.” Office-goers, students and hospital visitors compete for the same space, she said.
The problem peaks back at Lakdi-ka-Pul, where the bus stop sits on the footpath. Around 5 pm and 6 pm, commuters spill onto the road to wait for buses as vehicles cut corners, overtake from the left and take wrong-side turns. “We’d rather stand on the footpath, but there’s simply no space left on it,” said a college student, aged 19 or 20, who did not want to be named.
The last stretch, near the CID Office, Crime Branch, is taken up by a toilet block, a repair shop, a shop selling swings and restaurants.
MLA Colony and Jubilee Hills: Wealth, but no sidewalk
A few kilometres away, the neighbourhoods are wealthier. But the footpaths are not better.
Shabana, 32, a house help, walks 20 to 25 minutes every morning through narrow lanes to reach a home in Banjara Hills’ MLA Colony, which has no sidewalks at all. Where footpaths exist on her route, she said, people are often resting or sleeping on them. “Woh gareeb ke liye aur kaam aata,” she said, meaning they are more help to the poor. “I just walk wherever I see space to get to work.”
Jubilee Hills, with its new stores and cafes, fares no better. Near a bus stand on Road No 45, there is no proper sidewalk. “Zyadatar road pe hi chalna padta hai,” said 18-year-old Akshat Singh, a visitor from Kurnool, explaining that he mostly walks on the road because the footpaths have potholes and water, and are often not even visible. He knows the Supreme Court has made walking on a footpath a fundamental right, but said that changes little here.
Mohammed Asif, 29, walks from Film Nagar to Road No 45 every day for work at Asthra restaurant. Originally from West Bengal, he said he is often afraid to walk alone at night, as people have targeted him over his identity. The traffic adds its own danger. “Just yesterday, when I was walking home, a two-wheeler almost hit me; he looked drunk,” he said. With no proper sidewalks around, he has no choice but to use the main road.
Between Road No 45 and Road No 51, footpaths are largely absent. At the U-turns under the Durgam Cheruvu bridge, pedestrians wait for vehicles to slow or depend on traffic personnel to cross, and in residential stretches, hawkers and paan shops take what little footpath there is.
Where a footpath is in decent shape, it tends to be taken. “Hyderabad was not a planned city, so even in an area like Jubilee Hills, which is well-developed, the footpaths are not well-maintained. And if they are, like here, two-wheelers are parked on it,” said resident Abhilash Goud, pointing to a pavement outside a tiffin centre. Another resident, Revathi, has given up on them. “Mostly I see drainage waste on footpaths, so I don’t even feel like using them,” she said.
Nampally: Crowds and a contrast
Nampally is among the city’s busiest commercial areas, with thousands passing daily through the railway station, the Metro station and nearby bus stops, and past landmarks such as Subhan Bakery, Pista House and Yousufain Bazaar. Few get to use a footpath.
Near the railway station, footpaths exist but are unusable, blocked by hawkers, tea stalls and paan shops, amid a strong smell of urine. Near the Anees-ul-Ghurba Orphanage, the wider footpaths are covered in trash.
“I walk to the Nampally Metro station every day for work and the situation is very bad,” Azeem, a local commuter, told Siasat.com. “There are no continuous footpaths. Even where footpaths are good, they are covered in garbage or blocked by pan and chai stalls. It is just easier to walk on the main road.”
Then, a short distance away, the city shows what it can do. The stretch from the Nampally Metro station towards the State Assembly and Public Gardens is clean, paved and walkable end to end. It is proof that a good footpath is possible here when it is made a priority.
At Abids, people have stopped seeing the problem
A short walk from Nampally is Abids, one of the city’s oldest shopping hubs, known for its cloth and electronics markets and its Sunday book market. Unlike other commercial pockets, its main stretch stays largely free of garbage.
But the footpaths are narrow by design, and many sections are damaged by deep potholes, loose bricks and streetlight poles in the middle of the walking path. Display stands, second-hand booksellers and parked motorcycles take what is left.
Regular shoppers have mostly stopped noticing. “We never even noticed that the footpath is a problem here. We mainly just walk on the side of the road,” said Farah, 50. “But if you look at the footpaths here, they are good to walk on as compared to other shopping areas. But yes, things can be improved.”
At Hyderguda, not one unbroken stretch
Hyderguda Main Road, home to Cafe Bahar, Apollo Hospitals, D-Mart, Zudio and a cluster of plant nurseries, draws large crowds. Its footpath gives out almost at the start, where the nurseries take over what space exists with potted plants, saplings and bags of soil.
Beyond that, there is no uninterrupted stretch on the entire road, forcing pedestrians to move between small paved patches and the tar road. Metal barricades and private property fences block the footpath off entirely in places, while the stores and food outlets draw delivery bikes, cars and autorickshaws competing for the same road space.
So shoppers and hospital visitors do what pedestrians across the city have learnt to do. They walk along the edge of the busy road, dodging oncoming traffic to reach their destinations.
(Reporting by Syeda Faiza Kirmani, Khadija Irfan Rahim and Bushra Khan)
(This is part 3 in a six-part series focusing on Hyderabad’s footpaths and pedestrian infrastructure. Click to read part 1 and part 2)
