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Pain 'n' Park

Students are worst hit by PMC’s lack of a parking policy. They spend Rs 30 a day because of random parking charges at different places. Are the babus listening?

Nitin Brahme

Posted On Friday, February 05, 2010 at 12:49:31 AM

In PMC’s building permission rules, parking rules mentioned are:

Establishments such as hotels, coaching classes, shops should provide parking space for customers
Builders should provide free parking space
Colleges, educational instts should provide free parking
PMC should make parking lots on every road, charge nominal fees for the services

Free of charge

Pune Central at Bundgarden Road and Shoppers Stop at Nucleus Mall refund customers’ parking charges.
Kothrud Big Bazaar provides free parking for its customers

It’s not only finding a parking spot in the city that’s difficult. Paying for the same has become a headache, especially for young students.

The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has recently started a pay-and-park facility for the first time in the city. Mirror decided to check if the facility is indeed facilitating the two-wheeler riders in the city.

Law student Meher Manzoor said she commutes from her home to college and private classes on her bike and ends up spending Rs 30 per day in parking fees. Her monthly expenditure on parking itself goes up to a minimum of Rs 900.

Prasoon Kanmadikar, another law student, said his monthly expenditure has gone up due to the parking costs. “The new parking charges are more than a one-time meal in my college mess,” Prasoon said.

Commuting by two-wheelers has indeed become a costly affair especially if you don’t find space at PMC pay-and-park facilities.

For, if you park at private places such as multiplexes and malls, you will be charged much more than what PMC levies.

Meher said, “We end up paying Rs 3 as one-time parking charges when we keep our bikes in the college campus. But then, as students, we have to make several study-related trips out of the college campus — to get notes, photocopies, stationery, etc.

Every time we take out and bring the vehicle back to the campus, we have to shell out Rs 3. This way, we end up paying Rs 6-9 in college every day.”

Prasoon added, “This is not all. When we go to coaching classes, we have to pay Rs 3-5 every day for parking. When we come to F C Road or J M Road for an outing, we pay Rs 2 per hour to PMC.

If we don’t find space at the PMC facility, we have to park our bikes in some private parking lot and shell out Rs 5-6 an hour. In multiplexes and malls, the charges are Rs 10 every three hours.”

Since the city does not have a good transport system in place, people have to depend on personal vehicles, mostly two-wheelers, Meher, Prasoon and commerce student Koustubh Dube told Pune Mirror.

And the problems do not end here. Koustubh said, “Even after we find parking, we have other headaches to deal with: the dadagiri of parking attendants, our vehicles being scratched and tampered with, vehicles being dragged about and so on.

Moreover, the attendants don’t take any responsibility of your bikes. So, on one hand, you pay such large amounts and also fear for the safety of your bikes.”

Lack of a parking policy has resulted in haphazard implementation of parking charges, the students complained. Last week, youth organisation Youth to Youth met PMC commissioner Mahesh Zagade and appealed to him to stop the pay-and-park system and introduce a parking policy.

Two-three days later, Kothrud residents took to the streets, protesting against pay-and-park system outside Karnataka High School, citing inconvenience caused to them.

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