Footpaths or Parking lots

As the volume of traffic in the city increases the need for more parking spaces is a given. The absence of adequate parking spaces in Srinagar city is something that people have been crying about. Though government has created many parking lots, particularity in and around the city centre, but the problem still stays. What adds to the problem is that people sometimes avoid parking their vehicles in the designated slots; either to avoid paying some bucks or to avoid walking some distance after parking the vehicle.

This is really unfortunate and unacceptable. A city where roads are always filled with vehicles, parking a car on the roadside is no less than a criminal act. It causes so much inconvenience to a number of people. The vehicular movement is slowed down on many roads as we have cars and other vehicles parked on the sides of the roads. It leaves less space for the traffic to move, hence leading to slow movement and sometimes even long jams. Another problem that has surfaced up now is the parking of vehicles on the pavements.

Under the Smart City Project the pavements have been laid along many roads, in fact many pavements are very wide, even compromising the road width. This was meant to ease the pedestrian movement, and also expected to inculcate the habit of walking short distances while keeping cars in the parking slots some distance away. Now if these spaces are used to park vehicles it will create problems for those who wanted to use these pavements for the purpose they are meant to.

The authorities should take a serious call on this, and take punitive action against all those errant vehicle owners. It needs a comprehensive plan to ensure that vehicles are not parked on roadside or on a pavement. Besides creating more parking slots, or enhancing capacity in the existing ones by creating multi-level parkings, it is important to think creatively to find a long term solution to this problem.