Three tenders floated, but no response: PCMC parking policy remains on paper

In its over four-decade-long existence, PCMC has never had a parking policy in place. Local residents park their vehicles wherever they get some space.

The scene on the highway stretch in PCMC limits at 10 pm on Tuesday. (Express photo)

THE Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) is finding it difficult to implement the parking policy it framed in 2018. Till now, no contractor has responded to the tenders the civic body has floated to implement the policy.

While presenting the PCMC draft budget on Monday, Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar admitted that the civic body has failed to curb traffic chaos in the industrial city as it has not been able to implement its parking policy. “Though we have initiated efforts to curb encroachment along roads and reduce traffic snarls, we have failed to implement our parking policy. Because of this, we have not been able to fully handle the traffic problem,” he said.

The civic chief said the primary reason behind the non-implementation was the poor response to tenders floated by the civic body. “… The PCMC has floated three tenders and got no response for them,” Hardikar told The Indian Express Tuesday. The contractors were not coming forward due to the low tender rates, he said.

“The tenders were floated for running various parking lots across the city… the contractors are arguing that the tender rates are not viable for them as they are very low,” he said. The civic administration has revised the tender rates and decided to place them before the General Body meeting for its approval. “Once we get the approval, we will soon float the tenders and implement the policy,” Hardikar said.

In its over four-decade-long existence, PCMC has never had a parking policy in place. Local residents park their vehicles wherever they get some space.

The 12-km-stretch of Pune-Mumbai highway, which passes through PCMC jurisdiction, is among the worst-managed roads, as mechanics and second-hand car dealers have encroached parts of it. The ongoing Metro work has exacerbated the problem. Under key flyovers and bridges, thousands of vehicles can be seen parked throughout the day and even at night.

The civic chief said he was aware of the problem and his administration had initiated action from time to time. “The implementation of the parking policy will ease the bottlenecks,” said Hardikar.

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He said initially, the civic body will implement the parking policy on key roads, not on internal ones. “When the parking policy was placed before the GB, the members had urged us to implement it on key roads first and then plan it on suburban roads…,” said the PCMC chief.

The parking policy was needed in view of the rapid growth in population and the increasing number of vehicles in the industrial city, said a PCMC official. The population of Pimpri-Chinchwad has doubled between 2001 and 2017. In 2001, the population was 10.64 lakh, which by 2017 stood at 21 lakh. In the same period, the number of vehicles increased from 2.1 lakh to 15.68 lakh.

Manoj Dattatrye More

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. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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