Bangalore city is witnessing increase in vehicle density along with the increase in
population which is hampering the free movement of vehicles and people on the
city roads. With the boom in the IT, ITES, Realty sectors etc., the city has
attracted people from all over the country in search of jobs. As these
professionals are well paid they are opting for buying two/four wheelers, in
the absence of efficient public transport system, which is the main reason for the astronomical growth of vehicle population in the city. The growth of vehicles
has led to parking problems which has not been addressed by the civic
authorities simultaneously. This has resulted in increase in the number of
accidents and made life of the people miserable.
With
the growth of vehicular population day by day, one can see vehicles haphazardly
parked on the roads in residential areas, around parks, in the business areas,arterial roads and sub arterial roads. Many commercial buildings in the City
have converted basements into shops and offices. They are not providing parking
space for the visitors’ vehicles, who in turn park the vehicles on many streets
and by-lanes. In the residential areas people are seen parking their vehicles
on either side of the narrow roads in front of their houses. Most of the apartment buildings in the city, many of them constructed on narrow 30 feet roads
have not made provision for parking of visitors’ vehicles making the visitors
to park their vehicles on the narrow roads. This is leading to blocked traffic
on most of the roads, accidents, causing much hardship to the vehicle drivers and
pedestrians.
Given
the addition of vehicular population to the city every day – the supply facility
of parking is inadequate. In the long run, the demand will outstrip the supply
and will lead to extreme hardship leading to poor quality of life. The civic authorities must wake up and address
this growing problem of parking in the City on a war footing to mitigate the woes of the residents. In this direction developing and putting in place an
efficient public transport system will go a long way in solving this problem. Multiple modes like Metro, Monorail, etc., need
to be explored for offering and devising an effective public transport system. In future it must be made mandatory to all
buildings to have parking spaces in basements. It will further help to make it
compulsory for apartment builders to provide parking spaces for visitors’vehicles within their premises.
In
the central business areas as in foreign countries, multilevel parking systems
can be introduced to avoid parking congestion. On the arterial and sub arterial roads also parking facilities must be provided to facilitate free flow of
traffic and minimize accidents due to haphazard parking of vehicles on these
roads. Private Public Participation (PPP) model development of parking spaces
will ease the burden on the Government.
The Building byelaws mandate the provision of parking in the basement and adequate
number of car parks in the buildings, which is to be implemented strictly. The
urgent need is implementation of a policy to minimize and reduce the dependence
on the private vehicles. This can be achieved by offering effective transport
solutions by proper funding for the same. As the City is growing very fast, there
is a need for thorough co-ordinated operational urban planning with the support
of the institutions involved in Planning. Effective funding with efficient planning for the creation of parking facility is theneed of the day.
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