City malls use road for parking; BBMP passes buck

City malls use road for parking; BBMP passes buck
Monday November 12 2007 09:51 IST

Express News Service

BANGALORE: Even as the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) is going to town with its drive to regularise the building violations, most malls in the city continue to flout parking norms and Palike is content with passing the buck.

The visitors to Big Bazaar outlet on outer ring road near Hebbal Flyover, have no parking space and the cars are regularly parked on the service road.

On a bad day, even the ring road is used for parking. The outlet has about 70,000 square feet of commercial space and has a basement parking for a mere 50 cars.

The situation is worse near Forum Mall on Hosur road. Forum has another Big Bazaar outlet next to it and the parking queue clogs the busy Hosur road.

The newly added distraction for motorists on Cunningham Road is Sigma Mall. It has about one lakh square feet of shopping space and a three screen multiplexes.

Cunningham road is a one-way with roadside parking and the parking queues block half the road width. Other culprits include Garuda mall which together with Bangalore Central chokes Commissariat Road and Magrath road.

BBMP prefers to blame the traffic police. Speaking to this website's newspaper BBMP Joint Commissioner (East) Nagaraj said that the traffic police must allocate space for parking. He maintained that there is sufficient parking spaces provided for people.

“There have been irregularities in the part of BBMP earlier in providing adequate space for parking over the years,” said Nagaraj.

Regarding provision of underground parking spaces in prime areas of the City he added, “If the permission and construction was done prior 1983, then we cannot do anything. The by-law was different then. In case of other areas like Cunningham Road, Brigade Road, Nagashetty Halli, Hosur Road and City centres, we will review the places and act accordingly”.

However ACP (Traffic), Central K Ishwar Prashad said, “Earlier when the malls were constructed traffic management plan was not incorporated. But now it is different, we are taking adequate measures to ensure free flow of traffic. We are, however, not the infrastructure providers. Our task ends at the roads and footpaths. BBMP must ensure that each building follows the law and sufficient parking space is provide to ease traffic. They have enough powers which must be exercised.”