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Ahmedabad: Poor mgmt behind empty multilevel parking, says Study

It should be noted that the facility, built at a cost of Rs28 crore, can accommodate 600 cars

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The road near Iskcon Ganthiya is free of illegal parking following police action
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Even as the traffic police cracked the whip on illegal parking and many vehicle owners cried hoarse about lack of parking lots in city, the ambitious multi-level parking at Kankaria lies empty for most of the day. It should be noted that the facility, built at a cost of Rs28 crore, can accommodate 600 cars.

A paper on the poor utilisation of such parking spaces published in 2015 by Akash Desai of Civil Engineering Department of LDRP college found that space remained empty because the traffic cops failed to act on wrongly park-ed vehicles. The paper found that people, who parked their vehicles on road side, said traffic cops who picketed just about 60 yards away never stop them from doing so.

The study published in the International Journal of Advanced Research in Engineering, Science and Technology also found that the approach road to the multi-level car park is very narrow and has little navigation space.

"There is a lot of delay in approaching the structure, and in parking time and people feel comfortable parking their vehicle on the outer roads instead. The perception is that parking inside will be chaotic and they may get stuck finding a parking space. This discourages users from going inside," the paper said.

It also found that it takes more time to park and retrieve the car from the multilevel car park. "People report that inside the structure it takes 10 to 20 minutes to park. Retrieval is another 10 minutes. The users who are still not used to the system get impatient about waiting for the retrieval of the cars and avoid parking in it," the paper said.

Interestingly, an AMC official too had a similar observation as the study about underutilisation of the facility. "Amdavadis are yet to accept the idea that they have to pay for parking. If they can park for free on the road, why bother with multi-level paid parking? Enforcement of parking norms is very poor," said the official.

He said a car wrongly parked on the road attracted Rs200 fine and if it was strictly enforced, people wouldn't mind paying Rs 30 to park it in a multi-level parking. "Before the structure was built we carried out a proper study about the vehicles in the area and how many would park there. But in the absence of poor enforcement against parking on roads it did not work out," said the official.

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