The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : Will it solve parking problems in city?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 13, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

Will it solve parking problems in city?

V.S. Palaniappan

An exclusive parking area for omni buses is ready An exclusive parking area for omni buses is ready

Indiscriminate parking of buses on Dr.Nanjappa Road, V.K.K. Menon Road and a part of Sathyamangalam Road in the evening led to chaotic traffic The Corporation has come up with a parking lot exclusively for omni buses at an outlay of Rs. 1.64 crore Parking lot has facilities such as drinking water, toilets and eight tickets-cum-parcel booking counters

Coimbatore: An exclusive parking lot for omni buses on 1.83 acres off Sathyamangalam Road (near Textool Bridge) constructed by the Coimbatore Corporation recently, is expected to eliminate the congestion caused by these buses in Gandhipuram.

Indiscriminate parking of the buses on Dr.Nanjappa Road, V.K.K. Menon Road and a part of Sathyamangalam Road (near Cross Cut Road) in the evening led to chaotic traffic.

Boarding

Buses of nearly 25 operators bound for the southern districts, Kerala and Karnataka literally occupy the entire space on either side of these roads for nearly an hour to enable boarding of passengers and loading parcels.

Heart of the city

As passengers found it to easy to reach these boarding points in the heart of the city, the police kept streamlining the parking of these buses on the arterial roads.

Now, the Corporation has come up with a parking lot exclusively for these buses at an outlay of Rs 1.64 crores for accommodating 32 buses at any given time.

Adequate lighting

The parking lot has facilities such as drinking water, adequate lighting, toilets, eight shops and eight tickets cum parcel booking counters for bus operators. The Corporation charges a parking fee of Rs. 50 a bus a day.

Departure timings

President of the Tamil Nadu Omni Bus Owners Association, R. Baskar, said the parking space made available was not adequate during peak departure timings. He also maintained that people who had taken shops-cum-booking offices should be given at least one parking bay without daily charge.

Some of the operators wanted more booking offices inside the lot so that they could shift their entire office to the bus stand rather than operating from two places.

Frequent use

The Corporation officials said they were waiting for the surface of the newly laid parking space to become firm by frequent usage. With the tender finalisation in process, they said that black topping would be done within two months at Rs. 17 lakh.

The shops and booking offices had fetched good rent. Now, the Corporation has planned to construct a shopping complex and retiring rooms for passengers and bus crew.

The City Police have begun an exercise to prevent parking of these buses on roads. In the event of non-compliance, the drivers would be fined, a police official in charge of traffic enforcement said.

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