VIJAYAWADA: Lack of parking facility at Arjuna Street that leads to Kanaka Durga temple has resulted in a chaotic situation.
Devotees are facing problems in parking their vehicles and hence are forced to eventually walk some distance to the hill shrine via Mallikarjuna Maha Mandapam during the rush hours in the weekends and festive season.
Over the years, the devotees’ influx has been on the rise and parking has also been a persistent problem. Parking on the canal road and the internal roads in One Town locality has become a common sight, causing traffic snarls during the peak hours of the day.
On several occasions, the temple authorities have taken measures to allocate designated parking spots for the devotees near Mallikarjuna Maha Mandapam, but their attempts did not yield results.
On average, 6,000 vehicles are provided parking facility on the ghat road leading to the hill shrine every day. If the ghat road gets jam-packed with vehicles, its impact is witnessed in the form of traffic snarls near the temple toll gate and on the National Highway.
Devotees and residents of the One Town area are now appealing to the temple authorities to seriously look into the issue and make some permanent arrangements for parking.
According to the temple officials, in October 2016 Kanaka Durga temple and Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) exchanged their lands for the convenience of parking facility for the devotees visiting the Durga temple.
As part of it, the temple decided to utilise 2.10 acres of land belonging to TTD near Kummaripalem to resolve the parking woes and operate buses to ferry the devotees from the parking lot to the hill shrine.
However, the land has been utilised for storing the construction materials of Kanaka Durga flyover.
When contacted, temple Executive Officer V Koteswaramma said that a decade ago, the temple engineering officials designed proposals for a G+4 building with multi-level parking facility at Kanaka Durga Nagar down the hill shrine.
As per the design, two floors in the building meant for parking and the remaining could have been utilised for administration purposes. However, the project didn’t materialise due to various reasons.
Once again, the engineering department officials have been asked to study the design proposed earlier and level the stretch between Kanaka Durga Nagar and Lord Malleswara Swamy Temple to ease traffic congestion and accommodate parking for vehicles, she said.
Koteswaramma further said that the proposals will be discussed with Endowments Minister Vellampalli Srinivas, seeking his support for materialising the project through augmenting necessary funds from PRASAD scheme proposed by the Union Ministry of Tourism.
Proposal for parking lot made 10 years ago
A decade ago, the temple officials designed proposals for a G+4 building with multi-level parking facility at Kanaka Durga Nagar down the shrine. It didn’t materialise due to various reasons