Parking remains a major dilemma in the city, where spaces allotted specifically for parking are few and announcements that more areas would be earmarked for it remain on paper.
And now, the City police have revived their drive against what they call illegal parking. The police say the drive was launched on the basis of complaints that cars were being allegedly parked in a manner that obstructed free flow of traffic.
On Monday, action was taken against 1,191 vehicles. Of these, petty cases were registered against 456 drivers, while stickers were pasted on 735 cars since drivers were not found near them during the police action. The drive, the police say, will continue in the coming days.
While the police action is as per law, fact is that people have little option but to park their vehicles wherever space is available by the roadside. The city Corporation and other authorities who have classified several key stretches as ‘No Parking’ areas are yet to demarcate several sites that were identified years ago as potential parking lots.
The sticker on the windshield, therefore, is likely to be a regular sight on cars in the city.
With the arrival of some big private cab operators in the city, autorickshaw drivers have been feeling the heat over the past few months. The easy-to-use apps and competitive pricing have made such cab services a favourite with the younger generation. As a large number of people now possess smartphones, the popularity of such cab services is bound to increase in the coming days.
Many regular cab users say the availability of cabs late into the night and early in the morning has come as a blessing. They also find pre-arranging a cab for a specified time convenient, rather than waiting for autorickshaws. Though there have not been many complaints, safety concerns exist owing to incidents involving such cabs in some other cities.
When they were first talked about, the air-conditioned buses that the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation plies on various routes in the city were seen as something esoteric.
Now, the orange colour buses have proved beyond doubt that comfort need not be a stranger to the public transport system. With day temperatures soaring in the city, a ride in one of these buses lets one arrive “cool and comfy” at the destination. Even when there is heavy rain, a passenger need not scramble to down window shutters to prevent getting wet.
Has the time come to increase the numbers of these buses?
(Reporting by Dennis Marcus Mathew,
S.R. Praveen, and
G. Mahadevan)
