The Kozhikode Corporation has joined hands with the city traffic police to find a sustainable solution to the innumerable parking woes of the city. The Corporation council recently approved a project that, when implemented, would convert the city into a parking-friendly one.
The project was designed based on the parking study report of the traffic police, which was used to prepare a digital parking system to ease the flow of traffic in the city. The City Police Commissioner had approached the Mayor with the report, combined with another project report by a startup company Qcopy. The Mayor, in turn, discussed the matter with various departments such as PWD, RTO, RTP, and Harbour Engineering. A detailed report on spaces on the roadsides where vehicles could be parked without disrupting the traffic was prepared with the help of the traffic police. Thus, the first phase of the project to convert Kozhikode into a parking-friendly city was formed and approved by the Corporation Council on Friday.
The project includes setting up parking bays separately for cars, motor bikes, vehicles of disabled people, drop-off points and bus bays besides emergency/police bays in select locations on most of the roads in the city. Thus, 9,318 metres of parking area has been identified along the city roads. The highest concentration of bays is on the beach road towards the North of Corporation Office (1,098 m), while the Meenchanda Areekkad Road (950 m), Beach Road towards south of corporation office (950 m), Pottammal-Arayidathupalam stretch (845 m), and Pavamani Road (574 m) are close behind. However, there are a limited number of bays at Pottammal Junction and Rajaji Road, where there is scarcity of space.
Besides, there are bus bays at Mananchira, near Model School, Nadakkavu market, Mavoor Road Junction, Malabar Christian College junction on Wayanad Road as well as Kannur Road and MCC near Palayam.
The corporation has already set aside ₹10 lakh to set up parking spaces on wider roads.
Corporation Secretary K.U. Bini said that the engineering section had been tasked with preparing the bays.
With proper parking spaces earmarked on the roadsides and the parking plaza on Link Road nearing completion, the parking woes of the city may come down soon.
