BENGALURU: The snaking queues of cars you often see outside malls are mostly due to cab drivers waiting for your call. Thanks to the heat map, drivers of app-based aggregators like Ola and Uber can view areas with high demand. To maximize earnings, an increasing number of cab drivers line up their cars on the road especially in front of shopping malls.
Since most of the city’s malls are located on narrow stretches, complaints of frequent traffic jams due to haphazard parking of vehicles are on the rise.
To counter this issue, Bengaluru Traffic Police have decided to form a special team to help intensify towing of wrongly parked vehicles, which occupy a major carriage width of the road leading to traffic snarls near shopping malls.
“We have decided to intensify towing drive against illegally parked vehicles, particularly near shopping malls. We will also deploy additional tow trucks to check illegal parking and traffic congestion,” said Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) R Hithendra.
Frequent traffic jams and chaos in front of shopping malls are common in areas like Koramangala, Raja Rajeshwari Nagar, Malleswaram, Tilak Nagar, J P Nagar Second Phase, Mahadevapura, Yeshwanthpur and Hebbal.
Temporary closure of a mall in Malleswaram by the BBMP in January this year had resulted in reduction of traffic on the busy Sampige Road. Now, the mall is open and traffic situation is back to square one.
“We suffer a lot because of traffic congestion, mainly on weekends. In addition to the illegal parking, many cars entering into the mall line up on the road as well as autorickshaws reducing the width of the road,” said Nirmal Jacob, a regular commuter on Hosur Road in Koramangala.
“Vehicles move at a snail’s pace during peak hours,” he added.
According to real estate consultants, the city is expected to have at least five more shopping malls in another two years.