www.parisar.org

The worst fears of civic activists have come true. The one-way street "experiment" on Jangli Maharaj road and Fergusson college road started off without the basic infrastructure for pedestrian and cycle safety, and slowing down of motorized traffic. Inevitably, it led to its first casualty on Saturday, 5th November, when a six-year old boy lost his life to a speeding bus.This was in spite of many citizen's groups meeting with city officials and arriving at a plan that provided for pedestrian, cyclist safety, reduced inconvenience to bus passengers and controlled vehicle speeds on these corridors more than six months before the so-called experiment.

PMPML has once again got the short shrift. Its chairman-cum-managing-director (CMD), Mr. Nitin Khade, who had been in the post for only about seven months, has been transferred out to some other post. Mr. Khade was already the third CMD in the less than three year life of PMPML. This comes in the wake of its joint managing director, Mr. Karche, being transferred only a couple of weeks earlier. So, effectively, PMPML was completely without a top management for a couple of weeks. 

Parisar is executing a project that aims to build awareness about the role, relevance and importance of cycling as a means of transport among different classes of citizens. As part of this, it has created a kit to build awareness among school going children and has used this kit to reach out to children in two schools. It has also created a plan for reaching out to corporators (elected councillors) of the PMC and will be executing this plan soon. These activities are being undertaken as part of a project funded by I-CE.