Parking up

Any of us who has driven around trying to find a suitable parking spot would be glad to learn of any solution that trebles or even quintuples the number of parking slots available. Multi-level parking solutions are meant to do just that. These systems have been in use for quite a few years now, but they've been mostly out-of-sight-out-of-mind; I'm happy that my car is being parked, but I just don't want to visualise it as having two other vehicles on top of it. And these kind of parking systems obliged for the most part, keeping the sight of cars stacked one over the other well hidden. 

Even the multi-level automated public parking on Pondy Bazaar was housed inside a building that one couldn't see into from the street. You leave your car at the east gate and whenever you're ready, you will get it coming out from the west gate. What goes on inside is something like magic.

It was at the AGS Cinema on GN Chetty Road that I first remember seeing this parking with the skin stripped off. And that seems to be becoming popular now; here is one more such open parking, with 6 levels available. Squeezed into a small space between two flats, it must be for customers of one of the many shops along Usman Road. I would still be nervous seeing my vehicle at the top level of one of these - what about you?!

 

Gated parking

Seeing all those cars zip around George Town, one wonders where they go to rest for the night. For a long while, I was under the impression that the cars only brought the traders into the Town; when the day's work was done, they would go away from these congested enclaves, to their garden houses along the river Adayar to come back refreshed for the next day's work.

Obviously, that is not the case. Many of those conducting their business in George Town live fairly close by, if not in the Town itself. And the cars are normally parked inside the house itself - at least, with the shutters pulled down on the portico, there is nothing between the house and the road. Maybe these are additional cars, or more likely, these cars were housed in the building that used to occupy this space - and they keep coming back to their space out of sheer habit!

Expensive pause

The first automated parking meters in Chennai came up sometime in October last year. Four of them were installed in Mylapore's North Mada Street, where parking has traditionally been quite haphazard. They haven't done away with the parking attendent completely, however. The idea with these meters is to pay the money for the duration you intend parking and leave that ticket on your vehicle's dashboard. The parking attendent's job is to make sure that all parked vehicles show off a valid ticket on their dashboards.

Theoretically, it is meant to tighten up cash collections and reduce the risk of parking attendants losing - or being robbed of - the fee they collect through the day. The Corporation hasn't yet released any results of how things have changed in the three months this system has been in operation at Mylapore, T.Nagar and Taramani, but I'm guessing they will not be in a hurry to rip these out and go back to the attendant-only system, which was being run by the Tamil Nadu Ex-servicemen Corporation (TEXCO). The firm supplying these parking meters is getting ready to install them at a dozen more locations.

One aspect that has gone almost unnoticed is that the parking fee has, from one perspective, gone up six-fold: earlier, TEXCO's authorised rate was Rs.5 for a maximum of six hours. It has now become Rs.5 for every hour - and you can park in one slot for only 3 hours at a stretch!