The New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) has identified parking areas for pool cars to reduce congestion and traffic snarls near schools in New Town.
Pool cars and vehicles in which students travel to their schools in New Town remain parked along roads taking up nearly half of the carriageway, resulting in snarls, a senior NKDA official said.
The NKDA has been receiving complaints from residents almost every other day about private cars and pool cars parked haphazardly inside block lanes and connecting roads, said the official.
According to the official, they have identified parking spaces near schools where the vehicles that ferry students, including personal cars as well as pool cars, have to be parked.
NKDA found during a survey that several cars, after dropping students, remain parked along the road near the school the entire day before taking the students home.
NKDA chairman Debashis Sen said they had decided to allow parents to park their vehicles at the designated parking spaces for free for the first 30 minutes.
“We will allow a grace time for 30 minutes during pick-up and drop-off time. If anybody wants to park cars longer than that, they will have to pay a parking fee,” said Sen.
Cars parked along roads near the NewTown School on Thursday afternoon.
According to another senior NKDA official, they have asked the traffic wing of the Bidhannagar commissionerate to ensure that the cars remain parked at the designated parking lots.
“If any car is found to be parked outside a designated area, it will be prosecuted,” said the official.
On Thursday, The Telegraph spotted several such cars parked near The NewTown School as well as around Delhi Public School New Town.
At least one school said that because of the cars that remained parked around the campus, they have received complaints from residents.
About 50 pool cars drop children before 8 in the morning, at The NewTown School and many of them remain parked in the area till late in the afternoon.
“The residents have approached the school because they are inconvenienced by the cars. But we are helpless because the pool cars do not belong to the school,” said founder director Sunil Agarwal.
The school runs a fleet of buses which has a designated area for parking, he said.
After the schools resumed in-person classes, the number of parents dropping and picking up their kids in their own vehicles has increased, said a teacher.
Managing the traffic outside Delhi Public School New Town is a tough task in the morning, said Sonali Sen, principal of the school.
“Several students get delayed by five to 10 minutes because of the traffic outside. We are lenient on them,” she said.
