No one can easily find a place to park their vehicles in the parking space at Singarathope here.
Narrow roads, indiscriminate parking of vehicles, lack of space and poor management have made parking a nightmarish experience at Super Bazaar, which is surrounded by hundreds of textile shops including wholesale traders.
NSB Road, Nandhi Koil Street, Chinnakadai Street, Big Bazaar and Singarathope are considered as shoppers delight in the city thanks to availability of numerous showrooms catering to the needs of different income groups. But these are characterised by narrow lanes and by-lanes.
In spite of unimaginable increase in the number of vehicles, these lanes and bylanes remain the same as they were about 20 years ago. Surging crowd and vehicles that move inch by inch are the only difference on these lanes between those days and the present scenario.
To control and regulate the flow of vehicles, the police have been implementing one-way traffic plan for many years.
Even if the vehicle owners prefer to travel on one-way traffic roads, it is not possible for them to find a place to park their vehicles along these streets. The only way left to them is to park their vehicles in the space at Super Bazaar.
The space, owned by private parties, has a capacity to hold about 100 cars at a time. But it is always overflowing. It is jam-packed during peak hours. Though professional drivers manage to negotiate the narrow path to find a space for their vehicles, it is not easy for self driving owners. In the absence of regulatory mechanism, cars are parked haphazardly obstructing the path. It often leads to chaos, confusion and confrontation.
It is common to witness clash between drivers and owners due to dashing of cars when negotiating them during peak hours. Sometimes, it takes more than an hour to clear the bottleneck due to haphazard parking. Though the issue remains unresolved for several years, the corporation seems to have no clue to solve the issue as the parking space belongs to private parties.
“On an average, we witness at least 15 to 20 clashes between vehicle owners due to scratches when parking cars,” said a shop keeper at Super Bazaar.
A senior official of the corporation said it was well aware of the problem but it cannot do anything to ease the problem. However, shoppers say that it should explore the possibility of constructing a multi-level parking lot under the public private partnership mode.