If Sujit Bose is voted back to power, he has promised residents of Bangur Avenue a car parking plaza.
“People in Bangur Avenue will be gifted with a multi-storeyed parking facility if they vote for me. I have already zeroed in on the land to be used for this purpose. I will begin work soon after the polls,” said outgoing MLA and minister Sujit Bose, at a recent election campaign in the area.
But residents find his promise too little too late.
As in Salt Lake, Bangur Avenue too faces major parking problems. The issue is amplified in the latter as there has the street sides are also spilling over with sand, stone chips and building materials dumped by builders, as reported in the Telegraph Salt Lake on March 27 (“Concrete chaos chokes Bangur Avenue”).
“There are times when neither an ambulance nor rickshaw can pass in between. Both sides of the roads are occupied with cars. Battery Goli and the lane next to the Jio Store in Bangur Avenue suffer the most. The other lanes are a little wider, but these two lanes are particularly narrow. Sometimes there is no space for even garbage collectors to drive in with their cycle vans,” said Tamoghno Bhattacharya, a resident of Battery Goli.
Another factor is the rising cost of garage spaces in apartment buildings. Over the last two years, the cost of buying parking space below a newly constructed building has shot up.
“Buying a garage requires a minimum expenditure of Rs 20-30 lakh, whereas parking on the road is free,” said Soumyadeep Banik, a businessman living in Block B. So cars coming in from outside or even the ones moving around in the neighbourhood get jammed as the other side of the road is blocked by parked cars. Also, there is a shortage of parking spaces when new buildings use up the ground floor to open a shop, rather than keep space for a garage. Hence, most cars are found outside the building rather than inside them. Commercialisation of the ground floor needs to be restrained.”
Takeover by pandal-hoppers
Residents complain that Durga puja or Jagaddhatri puja bring their own share of civic problems. “During Durga puja, the lanes of Bangur Avenue are turned into parking spaces for visitors to Sreebhumi and Dum Dum Park pandals. Driving home from VIP Road or Jessore Road after work becomes a nightmare. We have to physically get out of our cars and look for the owners of the parked cars and ask them to move them,” said Sourav Saha, a resident of Block D.
During Jagaddhatri puja, too, the main road of Bangur Avenue is cordoned off for the three pujas that take place. All cars have to take a detour through other lanes, and even those lanes get blocked by parked cars, making it difficult for commuters to negotiate past.
Possible solutions
Residents are not counting on the parking plaza promised by Bose just yet. “We’ll believe it when we see it,” said some residents.
Some suggest that a parallel road to Dum Dum Park could be a solution, while others believe a signal needs to be installed at Bangur Avenue so that cars can drive onto VIP Road directly and not take a detour through Lake Town.
“Bangur needs to have a direct opening into VIP Road. Now, cars of Bangur Avenue have to either go to Lake Town or Dum Dum Park to drive onto VIP Road. We need a signal on VIP Road at Bangur Avenue so that the cars can move into VIP Road. Taking the detour from Lake Town adds 20 minutes of travel time. On the way to Lake Town from Bangur Avenue, if cars are parked on both sides of the road, travel time increases even more. Another option is building a parallel road alongside the main road of Bangur Avenue. There is a narrow lane near the canal side of Dum Dum Park, which can be widened for this purpose,” added Bhattacharya.
Arindam Moulik, a resident of Block B, felt that the building permits issued by the South Dum Dum Municipality should ensure that each building has enough parking space so that cars don’t have to be parked on the road.
“At present, a building with 20 flats has parking space for just four or five cars. It should be planned such that all buildings have parking spaces on the ground floor. The authorities can introduce a tax system based on this, which will also increase their revenue and take care of the issue,” he said.
Write to saltlake@abp.in