DailyPost 2754
BANGALORE’S NEW AGE PARKING
Bangalore traffic has been infamous from the potholed roads to traffic snarls at such an alarming regularity that it does make news. If you have to live in this city, you have to live with it. The new age traffic lights on the wings would in most likelihood make a difference in the areas covered by it. The moving traffic is somehow managed but what about parking. Parking today poses as much of nuisance as traffic jams if not more. It leads to lots of skirmishes and battels. You tend to decide your movement depending on availability of parking in the area you visit and at times you may have to think of parking scenario too. It can irksome to hostile.
Before we get into new age parking, the way the food app / couriers shoot out in their motorcycles even with red traffic lights on is scary and dangerous to one and all. That this offence does not get recorded as traffic offence, the culprits don’t get penalised, speaks of shortcomings of our public domain police camera system. Lots can be sorted out by the analytics enabled real time camera system. With regards to parking the structured parking fades into the blue once move out of the very well-known roads. Most of roads where we have one side parking on any day, we find both the sides in nearly equally messy affair. You will be able to make out the non-parking side only when the traffic constables put the tyre locks on the select few vehicles.
If you do a deep dive into the parking mentality, everyone feels that space outside his residence, office, even standalone apartments “legally” belongs to the owner /user of the said property. Even the security guards are trained to shoo away anyone attempting to park. I am not talking of passage way which certainly cannot be blocked. The abrasive approach is killing, no law enforcement can ever imagine to behave in that manner, but who is there to check them. At times even permanent cart vendors tend to claim the road in front of the cart. You will get a first-hand tryst with rule of law in this country in India’s tech capital.
From traffic cones, to chains to no parking boards all can be privately owned and used to one’s convenience. It is outright parcelling out of roads / public space for personal use. We can also see near permanent parking on pavements. Where do you walk? It does not stop here, two recent reported incidents would be an eyeopener. One-woman KAS officer “had a harrowing time when the staff of a real estate company took objection to her parking” her SUV in front of their office. The vehicle was blocked and she was verbally abused and assaulted by three persons. The current incident is when a *couple was thrashed and abused by a family for allegedly parking outside their family house. The video has gone viral. To park or not to park is at your risk. This mentality of taking over public utility space (parking) today has become a dinosaur.
BRINGING SANITY TO PARKING BEYOND MAIN ROADS IS A CHALLENGE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.