The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Parking at will adds to chaos

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 08, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Parking at will adds to chaos

By Vikram Sharma

`NO PARKING' ZONE, SO WHAT? That seems to be the attitude of many a motorist. The scene near Apollo Hospital in the Jubilee Hills area vouches for it. Photo: Mohd. Yousuf

HYDERABAD, APRIL 7. `No parking' says the board. But peculiarly, several car and two-wheeler owners park their vehicles right under it. It is not that only auto-rickshaw drivers are notorious for parking their vehicles at bus bays or in the `no parking' zone. Two and four-wheeler owners, too, have "joined the race."

The Hyderabad city traffic police have recently banned parking of vehicles at several important areas between 9.30 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. and again between 4.30 p.m. and 8.30 p.m. Some of the areas are Begumpet, Jubilee Hills, Ameerpet, Sultan Bazar and Secunderabad. They called it "free flow stretches."

Bottlenecks

Are these really free flow stretches? Take, for example, Begumpet. Hotel Yatri Nivas allows its customers to park their four-wheelers on the road itself. Ditto is the case with the Bottles and Chimney pub, which allows parking before its entrance on the road. Cars take a reverse every few minutes while some car owners wait to park their vehicles. All this results in slow movement of traffic, which ultimately leads to a snarl.

Talking of Jubilee Hills, one can see several cars parked on the road outside the Kasu Brahmananda Reddy park and the NTR Trust Bhavan. The situation is same at Parklane, where vehicles are parked on either sides of the road.

Surprising is the fact that several traffic police stations do not have a parking place! Their vehicles are often seen parked on the road, while the personnel get busy in fining others for wrong parking.

Motorists are not far behind. They park their vehicles right in front of shops, banks, hospitals or any other premises they have to enter. Residential areas, too, face the problem, with residents parking their vehicles on both sides of narrow lanes.

Surprising element

"We continue to fine those people who park their vehicles in the no-parking zones.

As far as shops and hotels are concerned, it is indeed surprising as to how they get permission to run their businesses even though they do not have the required parking place," says a traffic police official posted in the Secunderabad area.

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