Haphazard parking is a bane for Vijayawada roads

Vijayawada: The ‘parking culture’ -- Haphazard parking and dead parking-- in Vijayawada city is leading to major traffic problems. With irregular parking of vehicles on busy roads like Eluru Road, Bandar Road, Canal Road and Beasant Road, the carriageway gets blocked aggravating the traffic problem.

Despite commercial establishments and apartments having proper parking facilities in cellars, cars and two-wheeler owners rarely use them and neither does the traffic police insist on this rule.

Urban transportation experts say that at many places, cellars are constructed with engineering defects like the access ramp is too steep or the cellar itself is flood-prone. People hesitate to park their vehicle at such places and resort to parking on the streets.

Even cops are violators. For instance Benz Circle is known for regular traffic jams with cops blocking the carriageway with seized two wheelers.

Duggaraju Srinivasa-rao, a retired professor, said that the traffic police is only bothered about VIPs. He said a few roads are developed in Vijayawada keeping in view VIP movement and not for the common man’s interest.

Mr Srinivasarao also said that traffic police is not concerned about preventing the street parking but is more interested in penalising the violators with e-challans.

Commuters are also facing traffic problems due to dead parking. People leave their vehicles on the roads unattended. Scrapped vehicles get piled up at many places obstructing traffic flow. T.K. Rana, DCP traffic, told DC that street parking and dead parking are the two major causes for the frequent jams in the city. He said that 30 to 40 per cent of the right of way is lost on each road resulting in traffic problems leading to frequent accidents.

Mr Rana said these two issues were taken up by the Vijayawada traffic police on a priority basis. He said, “There has to be a mindset change among the people and we are working on how to spread the message first.”