Legality, morality and accountability of the vexed parking issue in the city
| Date :23-May-2024 |
By Vijay Phanshikar
LEGALLY, the Traffic Police are right when they book wrongly-parked vehicles in the city. Legally, the civic squads lifting wrongly parked vehicles are within their right to handle thetask. However, the issue of wrong parking in the city also has other dimensions besides legality -- morality and accountability on part of not just the citizens but also on part of the authorities of various agencies. Unless we, as a city, do not understand those issues correctly and tackle those accordingly, we may never be able to solve the problem of parking in Maharashtra’s Second Capital. This, therefore, is a reality check on the multiple dimensions of the vexed issue whose answer we have not been able to find for decades on end. But that has been happening not because we have no brains to solve the problem; that is because we have refused to pick our own brains to find the basic reason why wrong parking happens in the first place. Before ‘The Hitavada’ gets blamed for taking up a so-called wrong cause, it is necessary to hasten to add that in no way do we -- or anybody else -- can ever support wrong parking or justify it. We are in favour of strict action against wrong-parkers, if we may call them so. But then begins a line-up of honest and simple questions about the whole issue of parking. And the first of those questions is: Where is the space along many of the city roads?
Yes, along some roads, systematic spaces are available for parking of four-wheeled or two-wheeled or three-wheeled vehicles. There also are paid or free parking lots in many places in the city. So, if wrong parking takes place in those areas, then the Traffic Police or the civic administration’s squads are fully justified in picking up the wrongly-parked vehicles. But how can they justify their action when there is no parking space at all along countless numbers of roads in the city in all areas? For, people cannot park on footpaths or sidewalks or pavements. They also cannot park their vehicles on the passage-ways that are already crammed due to flowing traffic. Where will the people park their vehicles in such conditions -- where there is no space whatsoever for parking of any vehicles? For example, the part of Wardha Road from Ajni square to Shri Saibaba Temple square. The road has been sliced in the middle by the multi-layered flyover -- thus terribly narrowing the passage-way, with hardly a meter-broad (or even less at places) pavement. And there are commercial establishments, banks, hospitals, offices and private residences in that patch -- each welcoming visitors in good numbers.
Where will these people park their vehicles? If they happen to use the terribly narrow pavement, they violate the law. If they park their vehicles of all sizes on the edge of the already narrowed passage-way, they cause disturbance to the traffic flow, and also invite the risk of their vehicles getting booked by the Traffic Police or picked up by the civic squads. So, in that condition, the visitors to the establishments or residences along this patch of road have to look for parking space elsewhere miles away. But, to add to their trauma, even the lanes in the locality at the back, too, are similarly crowded. So, our question: Where is the space? This is only one example -- out of hundreds of such ones across the city. Therefore springs up the agitated thought -- that the city planners have not applied their mind while designing roads and bridges and intersections ...! As a result, the city is nothing but a nightmare not just for people parking their vehicles but also for other road-users. Our so-called modern town planning does not provide space even for transit parking when a person rushes to a medical store to buy an aspirin strip for himself and returns without wasting time. Our so-called modern town-planning does not allow space for parking of any vehicle for kilometers on many, many roads.
With such a faulty approach to town planning and designing of individual roads or road-systems or networks, how can the city ever solve the problem of parking space? And what can even the honourable High Court do by way of taking cognisance of stray Public Interest Litigations (PILs) that come up from time to time? Yes, on many occasions, the honourable judges issue directions to appropriate authorities to set up committees and discuss solutions to this vexed problem -- though ultimately to no avail. This has been happening for ‘thousands’ of years -- so to say -- with no solution ever in sight. So, when the city reaches such a point of boil, so-called wise men and women blame things on increased numbers of vehicles on the roads. Of course, that is the easiest way out. But then, nobody ever thinks about the disastrous planning of the town’s roads and intersections. When the Nagpur Improvement Trust was founded in 1936 and developed the overall city plan, Nagpur came to be known as one of the well-planned cities in the region. That plan was good for those conditions. Unfortunately, as the city changed with time, approach to planning of the city’s areas and roads did not evolve accordingly. Hence the current problem.
If at all we wish to solve this problem in utmost sincerity, we must begin by first punishing the people who have made the city suffer so much on account of bad town-planning and design. Until that happens --if at all -- we will keep asking the question: Where is the space for parking?