BENGALURU : Keen to find a solution to the parking woes faced by citizens in the city, the traffic police department has approached the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) to allow a few vacant plots of land to be used for the purpose. BDA says vacant spaces will be identified in each zone and allocated after due formalities are completed.
“The city is overflowing with traffic. It is time we realise the magnitude of the problem and do something about it,” said P Harishekaran, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic). “There are no parking spaces in commercial or even in residential areas. This also causes rift between people. I have asked BDA for a few corner sites for parking purposes,” he added. The department is also in touch with Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) to come up with solutions for the situation.
An official from BDA allotment section said once all the required formalities are completed, each zonal officer will be asked to report on vacant spaces, which will then be handed over to the traffic police department. There are about 78 lakh vehicles on the road in the city, including 56 lakh two-wheelers, and the number is only increasing every day. In January this year, the number of cases of vehicles parked on footpaths saw a four-fold rise, to 4,640 cases as compared to 1,045 cases recorded last December.
Commuters rue about the situation being especially tough in commercial places and a few residential neighbourhoods. “Places like Brigade Road, Commercial Street and Koramangala are the popular shopping hubs in the city, but it is just impossible to find space even for parking a two-wheeler there. It gets really annoying, and I have started using cab services to avoid the parking menace,” said Kalpana Akash, an IT professional who commutes from Mekhri Circle to Domlur for work.
Even in residential areas, lack of public parking space forces people to park their vehicles on the road, leading to conflict between neighbours. “Every person has a board on their gate that says, ‘No parking in front of this gate’. The lanes are really narrow. Where are we supposed to park our vehicles?,” said Sanjana Malli, a resident of Ganga Nagar.