With the Thillai Nagar Main Road reaching saturation point in terms of commercial development, the Shastri Road that runs parallel to it have in recent months emerged as the favoured destination for commercial establishments and outlets of major brands, bringing along attendant traffic problems that characterises other parts of the city.
The Shastri Road has been bursting at its seams owing to the indiscriminate parking of vehicles, especially cars, in front of the hotels, hospitals, banks and textile shops that have mushroomed of late along the road.
Typically, most of these commercial establishments that have come up along the road do not have any parking space for visitors. The parking areas in a few buildings could hardly accommodate more than two or three vehicles.
Significantly, a hospital along the road has even cordoned off a portion of the road space as the parking area for its doctors, while vehicles of patients and visitors line up along the road.
A couple of hotels nearby too do not have parking space and cars are parked in a haphazard manner in the area right through the day.
The Mahatma Gandhi School junction on the road has emerged a traffic bottleneck as scores of two wheelers and cars being parked on the roadsides.
Significantly, cops on duty at the police beat in front of the school turn a blind eye to the problem, as vehicles struggle to negotiate the narrow junction beneath the Thennur road overbridge.
On the other side of the road, vehicles of people visiting the recently opened textile outlets and the Passport Seva Kendra have all made the entire road stretch one long parking lot, complain local residents. Already, residents of Thillai Nagar have been crying hoarse over the unregulated parking on the cross roads.
People visiting shops and commercial establishments along the Thillai Nagar Main Road flock the cross roads to park their vehicles. In some places, such as the I, II, III, V, VII and XI cross roads on the East, and X, IX, VIII, V, IV, III and I crosses on the West, the situation has turned so bad that vehicles could hardly negotiate the road during peak hours as scores of two-wheelers and four-wheelers are parked all along.
“It is regrettable that the city police has failed to step in to regulate parking along the Shastri Road and as well as the Thillai Nagar cross roads. Accidents have become frequent owing to the unregulated parking, especially at the entry/exit points of the cross roads,” says Ramanan, a city resident.
Local residents demand a ban on parking for at least 100 metres on the cross roads and also on the Thillai Nagar Main Road and Shastri Road. No multi-storeyed building should be allowed without their designated parking space, they say.
Some suggest that the police at least enforce a system of one side parking along the two arterial roads on alternative days, as a temporary measure to overcome the problem.
