Bhubaneswar, April 12: At a time when the city is set to observe its 67th foundation day tomorrow, parking problem and traffic chaos continue to trouble citizens with the authorities either failing to implement the plans or delaying it.

The parking problem has been a constant and continuous headache for law enforcement agencies. The civic body has been planning many things such as institutional parking, on-street parking, auctioning parking lots to private parties and more. But these plans have not been very helpful yet. The much-talked-about multi-level parking is yet to come up.

With the increasing number of vehicles on the roads, the authorities have been planning to set up multi-level parking lots at different places for the past three years, but nothing has come up yet. In 2012, the public works department (PWD) gave the state government a proposal to make two such parking lots at Master Canteen Square and near Rajmahal Square by demolishing the government quarters. Nothing has been done yet.

Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) started on-street parking to streamline vehicles parked on Janpath. But it still remains a major problem because it fails to provide adequate parking space.

"We have been hearing about all these plans and claims by the government to turn Bhubaneswar into a modern city. But the parking problem affects everyone on the roads," said Sudarshan Rath, a local resident.

PWD officials said the multi-level parking would be a reality, but there were certain administrative roadblocks. "We are still working on the plan and it will come up," said the official.

Apart from the parking lots, the lack of facilities for people creates heavy traffic chaos at many places across the city. The foot overbridges that had been planned at three places over thelast four ago are yet to come up.

While the one at Jayadev Vihar is under construction, work on the other two at Master Canteen and in front of Ramadevi Women's College is yet to start.

"Many traffic lights do not work and zebra crossings don't exist at many squares," said Anupam Roul, a resident and an activist.

Besides, the authorities have failed to educate people about traffic rules and enforce them. Despite installation of CCTV cameras at several squares, traffic violations continue as usual. Traffic officials said they had been providing the best possible service to the public within their limited resources. The shortage of staff has hit the department and to counter this, the police recently implemented a special traffic volunteer system in which the public could come forward to manage vehicular traffic.

"We have been trying our best to change the people's attitude and provide better traffic service," said assistant commissioner of police (traffic) Jatindra Panda.