The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Cellar space violations lead to traffic snarls

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 03, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Cellar space violations lead to traffic snarls

Marri Ramu

Owners forced to park cars and bikes on the road in city

FLOUTING RULES: Cellar parking in a busy area in the city being used as a godown. — Photo: K. Ramesh Babu

HYDERABAD: Conversion of cellar parking space for commercial use means big money for builders. But this blatant violation of building rules results in traffic snarls.

With shrunken or no parking space, vehicle owners are forced to park their cars and bikes on the road.

"During peak hours, parking one car by a main road like Begumpet-Raj Bhavan is enough to throw the entire vehicular movement out of gear," a traffic policeman says.

If traffic movement comes to a halt due to a car left along Pizza Hut building on Begumpet main road, traffic police officials standing at Rasoolpura junction will not know about it immediately.

By the time they walk down the lanes and ascertain the reason, the congestion would have spread to other connected roads. Sometimes, it results in road rage too.

Many cases

After conducting a survey, city traffic police informed the MCH officials that 1,300 buildings on eight main roads in the city had either no parking provisions or had converted parking space for other purposes.

Traffic Police Additional Commissioner A.K. Khan says inconvenience in getting into a building's cellar is forcing people to resort to street parking.

Entry and exit points are either too short or too steep making entry difficult.

Women drivers are scared of driving into cellars because the parking lots are poorly lit, dark and unhygienic.

Space of even a few feet is worth lakhs of rupees in commercial complexes.

Obviously, builders would not hesitate to sell off the parking space even if it means encroaching upon rights of the occupants of the building and causing inconvenience to them.

No action

Despite numerous complaints civic authorities have failed to act on illegal conversion of parking spaces.

"I complained to MCH authorities about such violation in my apartment building at Somajiguda but they are turning a blind eye to it," G. Upender Reddy, a doctor, who lives near Monappa Island says. This kind of open defiance of the law is giving rise to suspicions that civic officials are hand in glove with the builders, he feels.

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