BENGALURU: THE busiest Metro station - Kempe Gowda Interchange (Majestic) station - will finally have a paid parking facility in place. The sprawling parking space around the station will have two entrances on Tank Bund Road and two on Gubbi Thotadappa Road. General Manager, Finance, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd, U A Vasanth Rao told Express that the space will accommodate 82 cars and 500 twowheelers.
“The tender for licensed parking has been awarded recently and the parking facility will become operational within 10 days,” he said. BMRCL has already readied the road and has tarred it, another official said. “To ensure the movement of vehicles does not create congestion along the railway station road, four entrances have been provided,” he said. As per the mandatory requirement at all Metro stations, there will be a provision to house 10 bicycles too. The parking space could ease the pressure on the parking spaces at KSRTC bus station and Krantivira Sangolli Rayanna station, which are the only options available at present to anyone who needs to park their vehicle and take a Metro.
A top official in the Operations and Maintenance section said that out of the daily average of 3.5 lakh commuters, nearly 80,000 use the Kempe Gowda station. “Anywhere between 40,000 and 50,000 commuters use the interchange facility to change between Purple and Green Lines. Nearly 30,000 come directly to make use of the Kempe Gowda station and it is this section that stands to benefit from the introduction of parking,” he said. Before the launch of the entire Phase-I on June 17, BMRCL had to call for repeated tenders to find a contractor for its parking facilities.