Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) has spent JD15 million ($21.19 million) during the last four years on renovation and construction of sidewalks in Amman city, said a top official.

Mohammed Rahahleh, GAM director of construction department, said the municipality had reconstructed several sidewalks of main streets in Amman and its regions as per the new and modern pavement guidelines.

The new instructions clarified the mode of constructing sidewalks as per international standards, he explained.

GAM, Rahahleh said, was keen to make Amman a pedestrian friendly city by providing safe spaces for the passers by and encouraging citizens to walk.

In 2006, GAM had launched sidewalks renovation project to create new sidewalks by removing trees and replanting them in sidewalks with width over 2m. The sidewalks less than 2 meters wide were paved without planting any kind of trees to provide more and safer space for pedestrians, he added.

GAM also specified certain criteria for tree plantation on the sidewalks. 'For instance they shall be of a kind that grow quickly, annually falling leaves, roots relatively deep, and with high branches.'

Since 2006 until 2009, GAM had removed 55,000 trees, the majority of which were olive trees, and the rest are the kinds that do not fit to the pedestrians’ movement, such as the Washingtonia trees, the official said.

Last year GAM had completed a tender of removing 10,000 trees with renovation works for sidewalks to which the trees were removed.

A study on the current situation revealed that olive trees cause dislocating the slabs of the sidewalks because of their huge roots, further, the branches of the olive trees occupy the whole space area of the sidewalk, which forces the pedestrians to walk away and go down to the street.

Amman Institute for Urban Development, which GAM established in July 2008, organized “20 minutes in Amman” to experience walking from “Paris Circle” in Al Weibdeh to downtown, then from the bottom terrace of the Castle (Al Qal’aa) to Jabal Al Hussein to end the route at Al Weibdeh.-TradeArabia News Service