Hanging Gardens’concourse unfriendly to pedestrians
A frail, 70ish man turned Superman right before my eyes last Sunday. A lumbering SUV speeded past his wife, she leapt back just in the nick of time, but was injured on her arm, mercifully not grievously.
The SUV sped on regardless, the old man screamed out loud to stop it, and thanks to a group of collegians, was halted in its tracks. Apologies were tendered to the old couple. The speedster got away lightly.
The moral of the story, if there can be one, is that the concourse at the Hanging Gardens is a hazardous spot. BEST buses reverse perilously to park at the terminal there. There are no pavements to speak of right from the WIAA club stretch to the post-office fronting the gardens, cars are double-parked, and the traffic is unruly especially during the weekends. Obviously patrolling traffic police is either wearing blinkers of ‘don’t give a damn’.
Touts and dubious guides throng the tourist spot. On the upside, the gardens — one overlooking the famous Marine Drive necklace and the other offering a view of the mounting skyline on Napean Sea Road — are impeccably maintained. Efforts were on to popularise the place with amateur rock concerts for a while, but that seems to have ended — obviously because of the lack of sponsors for such public events.
Either way, a tourist spot without adequate space for pedestrians on one of its flanks, is a contradiction in terms, isn’t it? So here goes a salute for the anonymous octogenarian who humbled the dude driving the SUV.
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