Now, police jump into muddle parking mess further

Parallel parking on MG Road from Feb 7

Get ready to keep driving round and round to find parking space.

Deccan Herald

Squarely blaming the BMP for not yet providing multi-storyed parking lots and disregarding vehicle owners’ plight, the traffic police on Wednesday announced a shocker of sorts. Angular parking of four-wheelers on Bangalore’s M G Road will be replaced by parallel parking from February 7.

According to the parallel parking system, vehicles will have to be parked one behind the other along side of the road rather than facing into the side of the road.
To put in simple terms, four-wheeler parking on M G Road will be like the way it is on Commercial Street now. An order to this effect has been passed by the City Police Commissioner.

Reasoning out the idea behind the move, the police said it will reduce bottlenecks. “M G Road is one of the prominent roads in the City. It houses several government offices and commercial complexes, Moreover, a lot of domestic and foreign tourists visit the road every day. But with the road not being wide enough, angular system of parking is hindering the smooth flow of traffic. This move is to ensure smooth vehicular and pedestrian movement,” stated a release issued by the City Police Commissioner’s office.

No solution
However, the release did not make any mention of the measures that would be taken to reduce problems related to finding parking space. As bumper-to-bumper parking takes up a lot of parking space, the new system is likely to make it difficult for motorists to find parking slots on the busy road.

When Deccan Herald contacted Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic - East) M A Saleem to find out how parallel parking would prove beneficial, he said, “Traffic is increasingly getting clogged on M G Road these days. Vehicular flow comes to a halt whenever a four-wheeler reverses. But in the parallel parking system, the blocks on the road are less.” Will the parallel parking system not shrink the parking space available on M G Road ? Will it not force motorists to keep driving around till some parking space is found ? Mr Saleem countered, “Roads are meant only for driving and they cannot be used for parking.”

Shrinking space
He said providing parking space was the responsibility of the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike and not the traffic police.

“By now we should have had multi-storeyed parking lots in place, but so far nothing has happened. Can the roads be allowed to get blocked. These are measures to ease traffic congestion,” he said.

When pointed to Brigade Road which has angular parking system, Mr Saleem said, “Traffic on Brigade Road is quite less as autorickshaws are not allowed. But on M G Road, all kinds of vehicles except BMTC buses are allowed.”