BENGALURU: With a chunk of the working crowd residing along the East-West corridor opting to take the Metro instead of their cars or bikes, companies now have empty spaces in their parking bays.
Metro’s East-West Corridor became operational on April 30. An average of 1.8 lakh commuters use this stretch and the North-South Corridor daily.
Thakral One Solutions Pvt Ltd and Thakral Services India Ltd are based in ‘The Estate Building’ on Dickenson Road. These sister concerns have eight car parking slots together.
T M Ramachandra, Manager of Administration and Facilities at Thakral One, an IT solutions provider, said, “Since these eight spaces were not sufficient, we arranged an additional three slots, for which we pay `20,000 each month.” He said that many of the staff members now use the Metro service and the eight parking slots they have are sometimes half-empty.
“We have decided to surrender the additional slots to our builder,” he said.
Ramachandra added, “I use the Metro to commute from Baiyappanahalli to Trinity Circle every day. Even the bosses at Thakral Services India Ltd, CEO N Ramachandran and Regional Manager Kiran Hegde, use the Metro and have set an example for their staff.”
Sanjay Gupta, Director of Dynpro Services Ltd, based in Halasuru, said “Around 30 per cent of my staff have now switched over to Metro. Colleagues would earlier argue about parking their vehicles in the premises. Ten vehicles would be vying for the available six spaces. We now find at least two spaces empty at any given point of time.”
Riding the Metro
Charulatha, a Content Specialist at Thomson Reuters, used to drive her car to her office at RMZ Infinity near Baiyappanahalli Metro station. “I live near Mysuru Road and used to take my car to office or my husband would drop me midway and I would then take the public transport. I now take the Metro to work and it takes just 36 minutes,” she said.
Raghavendra, who works in Mahadevapura, too has switched to the Metro. He used to travel by car from Magadi Road to his office.
“I now take the Metro up to Baiyappanahalli and use public transport from there. I do have parking space at my office, but I don’t need it anymore,” he said.