One too many means more money

One too many means more money
Deccan Herald

Parallel parking was introduced on both M G Road and Church Street to reduce the amount of space taken by cars parked at an angle on the pavement.

A month after parallel parking was introduced on MG Road, two or three cars are now being parked parallel to each other on parts of this busy stretch.

The scene is same on the narrow Church Street, where angular parking made way for parallel parking on March 2.

Though parking two cars in parallel is seen on both roads, the motives behind doing so appear to be different. On M G Road, it is mainly clustered near commercial establishments. Those who nip in to these stores for a quick shop leave their drivers in their cars, which are sometimes left ticking over.

Parking attendants appear happy enough with the fringe benefits they get, and the police often turn a blind eye.

When Deccan Herald asked a few of those about this practice, most responded that there was no space to park their cars in the already filled slots, and they would have to drive around the block again, if they were to move on.

On Church Street, it appears to be more on the lines of long term conveniences, when people working in nearby offices make arrangements with the parking attendants.

One of them said that most of the cars that were parked in the row at the back were those of government officers, who worked in the offices nearby.

Such cars on MG Road spill over into the road several times, squeezing the space available for traffic.

This is sometimes accentuated by autodrivers crawling around these cars looking for fares. On Church Street, while cars that are parked in some discreet space are not too much in the way, those parked out onto the road cause certain bottlenecks.

The system of parallel parking has been in place since a month on MG Road and more recently on Church Street. It was introduced to reduce the amount of road taken over by vehicles parked at an angle to the pavement.

The result was that the effective width of the road increased, and the number of cars that each strip of parking space could take halved.