Faulty parking design behind traffic chaos in Shimla

Bhanu P Lohumi

Tribune News service

Shimla, June 8

Three major parking lots, constructed on the 250-m stretch from the Lift to Hotel Holiday Home on Circular Road, have become a bane of commuters.

Long traffic jams are witnessed throughout the day, especially during the peak tourist season, causing inconvenience to the people.

Parking lots constructed by the Municipal Corporation, Tourism Development Corporation and multi-storey parking built under the public private participation (PPP) mode have the capacity to accommodate over 3,000 vehicles, but the number surges during the peak season as the Lift is the most convenient place to go to The Mall and The Ridge.

As the parking lots are almost full, tourist vehicles wait on roads and long queues of vehicles result in traffic jams.

The situation turns so appalling at times that vehicles can be seen queued up till the old bus stand and Victory Tunnel. Apart from an increase in the number of vehicles exceeding the total capacity of parking lots, a major reason behind the chaos is faulty planning as two of the three parkings have a single entry/exit point.

Vehicles entering the parking lots have to wait, while those checking out lead to chaos.

”There are no separate entry, exit points and service lanes. “The mess created by randomly parked vehicles makes pedestrian movement risky,” a local taxi driver, Pritam Kumar, said.

“It normally takes 10 minutes to reach The Mall on foot. By car, it takes more than 30 minutes and sometimes more than an hour due to traffic jams as the parking near the Lift has become a major bottleneck,” a Bemloe resident, Sanjay, said.

While acute water shortage problem, which spoiled the tourist season, has been eased to some extent, frequent traffic jams and inadequate parking remain unresolved despite an increase in the parking capacity from 1,000 to about 6,000 in the past 10 years.

“There are more than 85,000 vehicles registered in the Shimla municipal area and the number of vehicles plying in the town is about 1 lakh. The situation worsens when 4,000 to 6,000 tourist vehicles enter the town every day, choking narrow hill roads,” sources in the administration said.

The work on widening of Circular Road to remove traffic bottlenecks is going on at a snail’s pace and commuters are being harassed as the police are indiscriminately challaning the vehicles for wrong parking.

“The government has no right to challan vehicles when it has miserably failed to provide parking for patients and their attendants in three major hospitals and whatever parking space in available, it is used by doctors and hospital staff,” Sumit, a resident of Sanjauli, said.

• Registered vehicles  85,000
• Vehicles plying in state capital 1 lakh

Heavy rush adds to problem

• Parking lots constructed by the Municipal Corporation, Tourism Development Corporation and multi-storey parking built under the public private participation (PPP) mode have the capacity to accommodate over 3,000 vehicles, but the number surges during the peak season as the Lift is the most convenient place to go to The Mall and The Ridge.
• The situation turns so appalling at times that vehicles can be seen queued up till the old bus stand and Victory Tunnel.