The Times of India            28.11.2013  

Thane Municipal Corporation to identify missing road links to regulate traffic

THANE: The Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) is trying to establish missing links in its road network by carrying out a drive.

As part of the effort, municipal commissioner Aseem Gupta on Tuesday inspected a few civic wards to identify missing links in the major thoroughfares.

The civic body has been struggling to track as many as 20 major missing links in its road network over the past few years, many of which have been lost to either encroachment or random construction activity. The links range from 10 metres to 40 metres in width and vary in length. Any missing link could be 500 metre or up to 12,000 metre in length. In the absence of the link, a road network remains incomplete and is prone to traffic mess.

''The civic chief has directed to speed up the process of identifying the missing links in Thane's road network. Once that is done, the traffic mobility of an area can be successfully streamlined,'' said a senior TMC official of the engineering department.

In ward 1, the municipal commissioner inspected the road network, including the missing links, along with local corporator Naresh M.

"Near a land reserved for a playground, the access has remained poor because of a missing link in the network. The commissioner issued orders to fix the same soon. The missing link in the other wards will also be identified to improve traffic issues," said an official.

The corporation has over the years developed various roads according to the development plan (DP).

While some of these were developed to their fullest potential in width and length, others were left partial because of various issues, such as requirement of time or encroachment on the available land.

"Now, considering the present and future growth for improving connectivity and mobility of the area, the civic body has identified vital missing links," said a civic official.

The Hindu             27.11.2013

There should be no free parking in city: expert

There should be no free parking in the city, according to T.G. Sitharam, chairperson of the Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning (CiSTUP) of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.).

Speaking at the one-day workshop on “Urban Transport – Mobility Strategies for Bangalore” here on Tuesday, he said that as the number of vehicles in the city had gone up from 3.65 million in 2009 to 4.5 million in 2013, it becomes imperative that we should seriously do a rethink on providing parking spaces in the city. According to him, parking of vehicles should be banned on major roads. However, on some roads, it could be restricted to just one side. And, there should also be restriction on registration of vehicles. “If no parking provision has been made available at an individual’s house, he/she should not be allowed to register the third car,” he said.

While parking of vehicles should be totally banned in areas such as Majestic, which gets a lot of footfalls, in some other areas it should be restricted. And, instead of providing parking spaces in huge, big places, we should identify smaller places to create parking spaces on public-private partnership basis. That will make parking spaces easily accessible to the people.

Bhaskar Rao, president and chairperson of the Centre for Symbiosis of Technology, Environment and Management (STEM), stressed on the need for planning for “housing of vehicles.” He said that with on-road parking, the motorable space available on roads had naturally reduced. “Mobility planning should look at important micro issues such as how much space is available for use to park vehicles on the roads and footpaths,” he added.

It is pertinent to note that in September this year, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) council recorded the government’s decision to reintroduce pay-and-park system in the city, which was scrapped in 2005. Mayor B.S. Sathyanarayana had then maintained that the civic body would try to implement the system soon. The BBMP is yet to frame the rules and officials are yet to decide on the roads to be included in the three packages proposed by the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT).

The rates proposed by DULT too will be reduced as the BBMP does not want to burden the citizens, sources in the civic body said.