A few yards towards west from Koniamman temple on Big Bazaar Street is a new bus shelter that has been drawing attention.
The well-lit shelter with seating arrangements for children and adults has three display boards facing the in-coming commuter. Two of those are LED screens. The one of the left displays time, temperature and pollution level. The one on the right has Central and State governments’ schemes scrolling across the screen. It also alternately scrolls their achievements. The middle one helps the commuters with bus routes.
The shelter is tile-floored and the roof has a plaque that says that Coimbatore South MLA ‘Amman’ K. Arjunan has sponsored its construction from his constituency development fund. Atop, a solar panel powers the lights and screens.
Sources close to Mr. Arjunan say he allotted ₹ 9 lakh for the shelter so that it becomes a model shelter for the city.
Under his guidance, the Coimbatore Corporation engaged a construction company in Erode that constructed the bus shelter as a prefabricated structure, transported it to the city and merely installed it after giving the proper foundation.
The sources say it took around a month for the company to construct and install the shelter.
The feedback has been so good that commuters have started writing and texting the MLA to provide drinking water and a few other facilities, the sources say and add that he has planned to install another one near the Coimbatore railway junction.
But the bus shelter is one among the nearly 10 shelters on the street, both to the east and west of Eswaran Kovil Street. And, a few of those are illegal shelters that the Coimbatore Corporation has allowed.
Sources familiar with the illegal bus shelter issue say that to favour advertisers the civic body had allowed the illegal shelters that are over and above the number that the district Collector as the regional transport authority had permitted.
The new bus shelter that the MLA had funded and plans to fund should only be those that the Collector has permitted.
The sources also say that one of the reasons that the Corporation took over the maintenance of the shelters is to bring about a uniformity in design of shelters across the city. If what the MLA has done has had a favourable feedback, the civic body should consider replicating the design.
