With the monstrous growth of the number of vehicles in the city, comes the devil of parking issue. This happens to be worst at the city’s travel nerve-centre, Kempegowda Bus Station or locally known as Majestic.
This area covers the City Railway Station, KSRTC bus station and BMTC bus station. Also around here are the city’s major trade areas like Chikpet, Cottonpet, Sultanpet and many more. Lost in the congested and swamped roads of this area, one can see vehicle-owners with a huge question mark on their faces.
Parking at KSRTC Bus Station: What seems to be like a never ending work of Bangalore Metro, has taken its toll over the KSRTC Bus Depot. A whole of seven and a half acres of land has been acquired off this place by the Metro. With an arrival of about 100 buses at a given time, the depot is now able to accommodate only about 50 of them. “The cutting-down of the area has forced us to park the buses on the roadside outside the bus depot. Parking on the roadside creates a lack of safety and the passengers are not happy with this at all. To make things worse are the cops who constantly pester us to move. But we have nowhere else to park,”says Manju, a KSRTC bus conductor after a tiresome waiting for half-an-hour at the traffic jam.
Parking at Railway Station: Right opposite the KSRTC Bus Station stands the City Railway Station which is an important hub of the South Western Railways. The parking facility boasts of a capacity to accommodate about 120 4-wheelers and about 350 2-wheelers; but falls short to impress the public, especially on a Saturday.
A disappointed Ravi, who had to run an errand at the BMTC Bus station, told us that when he wanted to park his car in the Railway Station public parking space, he was asked to park in the median as the parking space was full and that the parking in-charge requested him, not to apply hand brakes as they might have to move the car to allow other cars to move”. The parking in-charge, in reply to this, told us that on account of the number of cars exceeding the capacity, they are parked outside the dedicated parking space.
K G Maharaja multi-level parking complex: With a parking capacity to accommodate about 400 cars, K G Maharaja parking complex is named in the memory of Kempegowda, the founding father of Bangalore,and is located on the ever-busy K G Road. Although the parking capacity is considerably huge, one usually finds this place only half-filled.A traffic cop who prefers anonymity told us, “People do not want to park their vehicles in the complex and walk up to places like Chikpet or Sultanpet which are only a few streets away. Instead, a lot of vehicles are parked along the roadside. Also a lot of vehicles are parked in unauthorised parking space and when booked a case, people seem to be ready to pay the spot fine and continue violating the rule. The public has to help the police to maintain discipline and convenient travel”.
Proposed plan of parking space at Freedom Park: In reply to a solution towards the parking issues around the Majestic area, the Mayor D Venkatesh Murthy said,“The construction of two acre large parking space near the famous protest area, Freedom Park, which will most probably start in about two to three months, will prove to be really helpful”. In response to the agitation being caused by police, the local councilor and several others, he added on, “The construction of this parking space is being made after setting apart space for the protests and other necessary events towards Gandhinagar and not towards Maharani’s College. It has to be noted that this is an underground parking facility and it will not cause any trouble towards the traffic whatsoever. I am personally making all efforts to get funds of about `200 crore sanctioned from the central government for the construction under the 13th Finance Commission of India”. With the government trying to increase parking facilities in and around Majestic area to ensure the citizens’ convenience, there falls a certain amount of responsibility on the citizens’ part to make the best use of it. With responsibilities equal on both the sides, a day with easy travel and convenient parking is awaited at the city’s primary junction.
Commuters speak: “With a hoard of buses and other vehicles standing by the roadside, there is hardly any space for us to walk anymore,” says Ramu who is 57 years old.
A confused commuter on the street of Cottonpet says, “Vehicles are parked on the footpath as there is no authorised parking space here. The condition is worse in and around Chikpet and Sultanpet because of the movement of heavy vehicles. With no place to walk on the footpath or the road which is always filled with a thousand vehicles, we are left stuck very often.”
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