Metro work a boon for citys parking crunch

CHENNAI: Late last year when the Chennai Metro Rail work brought a spate of diversions in most arterial parts of the city, people believed that the parking situation would worsen. On the contrary, now that the series of one-way traffic streets have been implemented, shoppers and families stopping for a bite have found that they can park pretty much in front of their destination with ease. “Now that there’s twice the space for people headed in just one direction, we can easily park on the sides of the road without causing a jam,” said J Sridhar, before walking into a sheo store on IInd Avenue.
For the last half decade, parking on the main road in an area like Anna Nagar has been becoming increasingly tedious. Though the corporation had allocated certain stretches for parking, these were inadequate for the crowds that came to establishments like Hi-Style, Santhosh Superstore, Saravana Bhavan and McDonalds to name a few. While parking on Anna Salai, one way traffic or not, is still close to impossible, the one-way stretch on Poonamallee High Road certainly seems to have better parking space now.
“It is definitely more convenient now,” said Valli, as she took her three kids for an afternoon snack at Saravana Bhavan near Blue Star. “Earlier I would have had to park about half a kilometre away on the main road or in a side lane – either way the kids would have had to walk in the hot sun. But now there is enough parking space behind these,” she said motioning toward the red barricades placed by traffic cops. One very important reason for people parking their cars without too much worry is because the volume of traffic has certainly decreased after the diversions.
Looking at the neat line of cars that stand almost in single file all the way from KMC to Sangam Theatre, it seems like they were guided to park there, “If we ask people not to park in certain places, they just ignore us, So we have extended the parking area and make them park in a neat row,” said a Corporation parking attendant who wished to remain anonymous. As long as there aren’t undue traffic build-ups, the cops don’t see a need to bring in a tow-truck or get out their steering locks, as one inspector in Aminjikarai told City Express.
So all’s well that parks well then? Not entirely. Residents who live between the commercial establishments in Shanti Colony are a miffed lot, “I haven’t been able to drive my car into my house even one day, ever since this one-way came along,” complained Prathap, “Every day I have to walk into the ice cream parlour next door and scream for the owner of a red-white-black-blue car to get it the hell out of there,” he fumed.

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