The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Traffic woes will worsen: experts

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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Traffic woes will worsen: experts

T. Nandakumar

Impact of a possible small car boom

City cannot handle sudden increase in number of vehicles
Affordability of
cars will appeal to
the middle class

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A boom in the sale of cheaper small cars can overwhelm a city like Thiruvananthapuram, leading to heavy traffic congestion and parking problems, experts say.

Urban planners and traffic managers feel that the city is not equipped to handle a sudden increase in number of vehicles bound to happen once the sale of such cars takes off later this year.

While the newly unveiled Tata Nano, billed as the cheapest car in the world, is expected to hit the market by September, other manufacturers, such as Bajaj Auto, have announced plans to launch similar models.

More car buyers

“The affordability of small cars will appeal to a large section of the middle class that had hitherto depended on two-wheelers for transport. The result can be chaos unless the city roads and traffic system are geared up to handle the staggering increase in the number of vehicles,” warns the former Chief Town Planner K. Kasturirangan.

Experts fear that the small-car boom will deal a heavy blow to the public transport system as more consumers prefer to drive their own vehicles instead of taking a bus to their workplace. “It can be a recipe for a traffic nightmare. Parking is bound to be the biggest problem,” Mr. Kasturirangan says.

An acute shortage of off-street parking space in the city is a major problem for road users. The development of parking areas has failed to keep pace with the increase in number of motor vehicles. Despite years of effort, the State government, the City Corporation and the Thiruvananthapuram Development Authority have not been able to identify land to set up parking lots.

Use of parking lots for other purposes and encroachment by hawkers have compounded the problem. Parking bays in the busy market areas are filled to capacity during peak hours, forcing vehicles to waste fuel in taking circuitous routes to find other slots.

More than 20 per cent of the road space at major junctions and commercial centres is appropriated by cargo vehicles, autorickshaws and taxis. Efforts to restrict haphazard parking of taxis and autorickshaws have met with severe resistance from drivers’ unions.

Meanwhile, the City Corporation has scaled down a proposal to develop off street parking facilities at six locations on the congested stretches of Mahatma Gandhi Road from Statue to Pazhavangadi. This follows the use of plots that were earlier identified for a build-operate-transfer (BOT) project to set up parking plazas for other purposes.

Even as the proposal to acquire the land got bogged down in procedural wrangles, the Corporation issued building permits to the landowners to construct buildings. Mayor C. Jayan Babu had issued directions to the Town Planning section to look into the use of plots earmarked for parking plazas for other purposes.

The Town Planning committee is now learnt to have narrowed down its option to two vacant plots, one at the Model School junction and the other near the AKG Centre. The committee is awaiting a response from the Revenue Department for the land records and survey sub numbers of the two plots. P. Harikumar, committee chairman, said prohibitive land prices and acquisition problems constituted the biggest problem in setting up parking lots. He said multi-level mechanised parking lots equipped with ramps or lifts could offer a solution.

“The availability of cheap small cars will encourage most families to go in for a second four-wheeler. This calls for revision of the building rules to ensure that every flat in an apartment complex has at least one parking area instead of the current ratio of one parking area for every four flats,” says another former Chief Town Planner, K. Thomas Paulose. “There has to be an integrated approach focussing on road widening, improvement of parking facilities and better enforcement of traffic rules.”

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