At the Pondy plaza in Chennai, parking of vehicles is an issue
Posted on: 05/Sep/2019 9:45:34 AM
Pondy bazaar in Chennai is very busy and congested place with lots of visitors is well known. It must be noted that there are plans to make Pondy bazaar an open air mall. It is now said that the lack of availability of the parking space is a barrier for this. The shop owners and their employees park their vehicles on the wide pavements. In addition to this, vehicles belonging to the police department also get parked on the plaza.
Soon there would be on street parking management and this was according to Mr. Raj Cherubal of Chennai Smart City Limited. It must be noted that around 234 car parking spaces have been marked and cameras have been placed. He spoke about how the old TN electricity board building was cleared and as many as 50 cars or 200 two wheelers could be parked.
According to a survey made by ITDP, it is clear that 13 side streets could accommodate around 500 cars. Point is tender is on the way and this was confirmed by Mr. Raj Cherubal. Thearagaya Road would be made as one way soon and the flow of traffic would be made smooth after making it one way.
Beautifying an area when the end users do not benefit in the long run would be of no use and this was as per a resident of T. Nagar. He commented about how a pedestrian plaza that was meant for walking was filled with 2 wheelers and cars making it tough for walking.
It was later pointed out by a shopper that these types of projects fail because of the lack of proper planning. The shopper then spoke about how the multi level car parking would take 9 months and how on-street parking management would be tested and implemented later. She finally shed light on how the corporation should have constructed these spaces first.
Most vehicles parked on the plaza belonged to the shop owners and this was as per an engineer belonging to the corporation of Chennai. He added that the shop owners have agreed to use the parking lot to be provided at Siva Nyanam Street. It is worthy to note that smart bike station might be set up for the employees. It was mentioned by the official belonging to the corporation that the public would pay on hourly basis on the street and that could be Rs 20 for cars.
