Vehicles increase, but number of parking offence cases is down

Police attribute this to lack of adequate manpower to manage traffic in the city

Violating rules: The two main offences are wrong parking and parking on footpaths.

Vehicles parked haphazardly everywhere — in no-parking zones, on footpaths, in front of Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) bus stops — is not an uncommon sight in the city. Yet, ironically, the number of cases booked for parking offences dropped in 2016 compared with the previous year by a large number — 5.98 lakh.

But does this mean that fewer parking offences occurred on the city’s roads, infamous for its traffic snarls? According to the traffic police, this is not the case. The problem, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) R. Hithendra said, lies in the number of people managing the traffic.

The number of posts sanctioned to manage over 66 lakh vehicles on the roads (figure as of December 2016, and excluding ‘floating’ vehicles) was increased from 3,500 to 5,177. However, only around 2,900 posts have actually been filled.

Not only that, the fact that offenders can get away by paying a measly ₹100 as fine is also proving to be a handicap, traffic police said. “Many a time, it is a task to track down offenders’ addresses just to get them to pay this amount as fine, especially when we don’t have enough manpower to manage the traffic,” said Mr. Hithendra.

But for neighbourhoods that are choking because of erratic parking, this spells bad news. Anoop Hegde from the Traffic Task Force of Defence Colony, Indiranagar, said the inner roads in the area had become the ‘backyard’ for establishments on 100 ft Road and C.M.H. Road. “We have had many discussions with the police. But they say that with the available manpower, their focus will be on the arterial roads. It’s a pain point. There is hardly any signage or enforcement of rules, such as no parking at intersections,” he said.

Will pay-and-park work this time?

While the city struggles to cope with the parking menace, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike is making yet another attempt to revive its long-pending proposal to introduce pay-and-park system this year, which could ease the problem a bit. BBMP Commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad said the palike’s tenders received no response twice earlier. “But this time, we will be issuing new tenders for automatic parking with a few changes. Some companies have showed interest,” he said.

As for the problem in residential areas, Mr. Prasad confessed that parking is one of the main issues that came with the commercialisation of residential areas. “We have already issued notices to such establishments. Some have closed down voluntarily, some have replied while others have simply ignored the notices,” he added.