Parking circus drives away many vehicles

Parking circus drives away many vehicles

Parallel parking has been introduced to ease traffic flow, but problems like lack of space continue to haunt people.

Deccan Herald

The general appearance of the Mahatma Gandhi Road and St Mark’s Road has subtly changed, with the cars now being parked parallel to the pavements, instead of at an angle to it.

Several questions arise: will the traffic flow really be eased? Won’t the system mean less number of cars that can be deposited in a given space? Johnny, who works for an IT company and is a part time model, sums up the situation thoughtfully: it looks good, he says, “but I don’t know how effective it is going to be”. Parking might be a bit of a pain, though, he thinks.

Rajkumar, who managed to manoeuvre his car into a slot, definitely thinks so. The civil engineer, said that even with his small car, the operation is a ‘circus’. Just imagine the plight of the Mercedes Benzes, he wonders.

What about those faithful shepherds of our cars, the parking attendants? To go by the response of a somewhat irritated Kumar, their outlook is gloomy. Parking and removing vehicles is a pain, though he admits that traffic flow will be eased. His main problem is simply in numbers. “In this space,” he indicates, “you could park 18 vehicles before, now you can barely fit half that number.” His revenues are similarly cut by half.

ASI Thimarayappa from Cubbon Park station says the priorities are otherwise. For one, MG Road, which is one of the prime roads of Bangalore, has to appear good. And for that, one of the factors is good traffic management.

“With parallel parking the effective width of the road increases, and the priority is the free flow of traffic,” he says. As for the difficulty in taking out the car, well, the owner should make sure that he parks it with enough space to take it out. Availability of space decreased, he admits, but “parking has been a problem from a long time ago,” he says.

Shabir, a driver, is sure that parking will be a problem. “A professional driver will know how to set about it, but that won’t be the case with many private owners.” An interesting addition to the issue that he makes is the confusion that arises because, it is really hard to make out if a person is parking his vehicle, or taking it out.

Puneet, who runs a business, differs. “Anyway you don’t get parking space,” he says.

“It looks better like this.” His friend Ravindra suggests that the situation might improve if a system like that in Brigade road, where a car can be parked only for two hours, can be introduced. If the traffic flow does get eased, everyone can at least have some reason to cheer.

Otherwise, the only people who stand to benefit are the mechanics, who can look forward to a steady stream of dents to straighten out.