Pay twice to park your vehicle

Chennai: Parking a car at Pondy Bazaar and a few other areas in the city often has one paying both the Chennai corporation's parking meter rates and also those fixed by staff hired on contract on the premises.

A top official from the corporation has now assured action against such irregularities. The civic body’s rate is Rs 5 an hour and another Rs 5 for every additional hour. The drivers must collect a ticket, printed with the car’s number and display it on the dashboard of their vehicles after parking it.

But contract workers insist that the car owners buy 10-rupee tickets against the fixed charge of Rs 5 per hour. The tickets do not have any car number printed on them and the staff often fails to explain the details of the billing system they use.

“We are paid poorly and this extra buck helps us meet our ends,” said a parking assistant at Pondy Bazaar. “The workers need to deposit at least Rs 700 every day to the contractors,” said a doorkeeper at the locality requesting anonymity.

Adding that after paying the private parking firm the daily deposit money, the balance additional amount is distributed among workers. Saturdays and Sundays are always a good hunt as vehicles throng the parking lots, he noted.

When contacted about these parking irregularities by workers hired by private firms, a senior corporation official said so far they had not received any complaints. “If there are specific complaints necessary action will be taken,” he said.

City’s parking woes sprout in many forms

City corporation has installed  parking meters at 12 places. These include Shanthi Colony, Tara­mani, Purasawalkam, Gandhi Nagar, Whites Road and a few places in Anna Nagar and Pondy bazaar.

The corporation started the initiative contracting it to private parties with an agreement of 11.5 per cent share from the total revenue earned from ticket collection. Now the deal has reached 19 per cent and corporation officials find the project good for the civic body.

However, the parking woes in the city do not come to an end, but only sprout in some other form.

If traffic is conceptualised as the main villain, parking comes as the sidekick adding to the woes of residents. There are very few places in the city where one can get their vehicles parked for a certain rate.

“I used to park my car at Spencer Plaza two years ago, but now they have increased the rates seeing other malls charging exorbitant rates,” said S.Madhan, a marketing exe­cutive. On CSIR road in Taramani, two-wheelers are parked on the footpaths due to lack of space. “The MNCs and other IT firms should first ensure that there are enough parking for their employees,” said Harish.S, an IT employee.

In residential areas like Mylapore and Mandaveli, vehicles are parked in narrow lanes in front of houses making it difficult to traverse through the streets. Roads can be widened in places encroached and converted into parking spaces, feel residents.

With the ever-growing vehicle population, it’s time the officials and planners came up with a solution to counter the parking woes.

Chennai bikers most affected

Around 1,000 mot­o­rcycles are add­ed to city roads ever­yday. Almost 75 per cent of the city’s vehicular population comprises motorcycles as per the latest estimates.

The increased ea­r­­ning capacity of people and easily available loans from banks have only incr­eased the number of moto­rcyc­les on roads. Mot­o­rists in Chennai feel that in spite of huge growth in vehicle population, the corporation has done little to ease the congestion on roads.

According to official sour­­ces, Chennai has more number of two-whee­lers than Delhi and Mumbai. “In Adyar,  the are­as under the flyover have been used as parking spaces, but those are not enough,” feels Gopi Krishnan, a resident of Gan­dhi Nagar. The case is similar in many parts of Chennai which do not have enough parking spa­ce for their motorists.

Busy areas like T.Nagar and Broadway where lakhs of people gather face this problem and many times bikes get towed away by the traffic personnel. “We are left with no choice. Our priority is easing out traffic snarls,” said a senior traffic personnel in T.Nagar.

The corporation has come up with paid parking spaces for cars in 12 parts of the city like Pon­dy Bazaar, Adyar, Tara­mani and Mylapore. But, there seems no respite for motorists from the parking woes.

S.Sumathi of MRC Nag­ar said, “Most of the time, bikes are parked in  small lanes and in front of the shops on North Mada Street in Mylapore.” A senior town planning official in CMDA said the stalled multi-level parking project in five busy places in the city might help  rein in the problem to some extent.