This is an archive article published on February 8, 2021
Pimpri-Chinchwad’s first ‘pay and park’ policy to roll out on 13 major roads from March 1
Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar told The Indian Express on Monday that the civic standing committee has given its green signal and the civic administration is all set to implement its first parking policy in the city.
Heavy vehicles and private buses will have to pay Rs 100 for per hour parking. (Express Photo)
The Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) has decided to finally roll out its long-delayed ‘pay and park’ policy from March 1. The policy will be implemented on 13 major roads in the industrial city.
Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar told The Indian Express on Monday that the civic standing committee has given its green signal and the civic administration is all set to implement its first parking policy in the city. “The policy was first approved in 2018… We have received good response to the tendering process and are now in the final stage of rolling it out,” he said.
The civic chief said initially, the policy will be implemented on major roads in the city, including Pune-Mumbai Highway and Pune-Nashik Highway. “We will implement the policy in a phased manner. First, we will implement it on major roads and then we will move to internal roads which are narrow and see increasing load of traffic,” he said.
For two-wheelers and three-wheelers, Rs 5 will be charged for per hour parking. For cars and tempos, Rs 10 will be charged, and for trucks and mini buses, Rs 25 will be charged. Heavy vehicles and private buses will have to pay Rs 100 for per hour parking. The policy is being implemented in all six zones of the civic body.
The PCMC chief said once the parking policy comes into force, traffic discipline will be easier to enforce.
PCMC Executive Engineer Shrikant Savane said,”We are in the process of finalising the spots where tempos, cars, trucks and buses can be parked. The Pimpri area might get tempo parking as they can be found in this suburb. Similarly, truck parking spots have not been finalised yet. We might allow it on Nashik Road.”
Meanwhile, BJP MLA Laxman Jagtap said, “Parking has become a big issue in Pimpri-Chinchwad. Because of haphazard and indiscriminate parking, chaotic traffic conditions are growing in the industrial city.”
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Jagtap, who has written a letter to PCMC administration, police and RTO over the issue, said,”I had raised the issue of chaotic traffic conditions in the state assembly last month.”
He said parking of private buses has become the biggest problem. “Whether in Pimple Gurav, Pimple Saudagar or Kasarwadi, private buses are parked indiscriminately, creating hurdles for smooth movement of other vehicles,” he said.
Jagtap said vehicle repair shop owners park the vehicles on the roads while carrying out their work. “The prime example is at Kasarwadi, where the vehicular traffic is a nightmare as vehicles are parked right on the road by mechanics. This has been going on for very long, with police and PCMC administration turning a blind eye to the problem,” he said.
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Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
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