The Greater Chennai Corporation has proposed to strengthen the parking management system and increase the parking spaces along major roads in the 200 wards of the city after removing abandoned vehicles.
The number of parking slots in the city is expected to increase from 5,300 after the civic body identifies parking slots along all the major roads in commercial areas in October.
Owing to lack of coordination between the Engineering Department and the Revenue Department, the civic body had been unable to compile a comprehensive list of street parking spaces. Many of the 15 zones of the GCC had delayed the compilation of parking spaces.
Mayor R. Priya and Corporation Commissioner J. Radhakrishnan held a meeting on Tuesday and reviewed the progress of parking management initiatives. The civic body had started removing abandoned vehicles and cleared spaces for traffic movement and improved parking of vehicles.
Each licence inspector of the Revenue Department had been asked to identify parking spaces on more roads. But the drive had not been completed because of lack of coordination at the zonal level among GCC engineers. The civic body has been able to compile a list of just 200 additional parking slots so far.
The Corporation had launched various initiatives to improve traffic flow and strengthen parking management. Of the 1,308 abandoned vehicles identified along roads in the city, the Corporation had seized 205 vehicles in the past 26 days. Over 50 vehicles had been handed over to their owners. Owners of the abandoned vehicles would get 15 days time to claim the vehicles. The civic body had planned to initiate e-auction of the abandoned vehicles after October 15.
The Corporation nets ₹65 lakh a month from parking charges collected from the 5,300 street parking slots. The parking charges for cars are ₹20 an hour and two-wheelers ₹5 an hour. The parking charges were increased to ₹60 an hour in Thanikachalam Road in T. Nagar a few months ago to facilitate utilisation of the multi-level parking lot in the area. However, most of the motorists preferred street parking, said an offiicial.
As a result, 50 slots of street parking along Thanikachalam Road had been occupied, generating more revenue for the Corporation. Plans were afoot to delineate more parking slots along all the major roads after October in commercial areas to increase revenue. Councillors have demanded the GCC to earmark more parking spaces along major roads.
