Encrochment shrinks parking space

Sunil Burse,chief engineer with PMPML said,“Almost all over depots are stuffed with double the number of buses they can carry. The capacities that we are talking about are also much more than the ideal capacities,with systematic angular placing of buses and not like what we presently do which can damage bus bodies while buses are being moved.”

Another senior PMPML officer said,“At three of our bus depots,areas available to us have literally been halved due to one or other reason in the last few years. A police station has been built on the land which was earlier with us at the Hadapsar depot. We lost half the area at the Swargate depot due to road widening. We thus have to park the buses at night at a spot away from the actual spot of starting,incurring extra fuel charges. People and traffic experts expect service quality like that by BEST in Mumbai,how many of them compare our infrastructure with that of BEST? Some of the BEST depots are spread over more than 70 acres. Total area under our bus depots is not more than 40 acres.”

Sunil Gawali,traffic manager with PMPML said,“The places that we use for turning the buses at the depots have been rampantly encroached. Hawkers have flocked around the circle that we use for turning at the Narveer Tanaji Wadi bus depot. Throughout the day there are bikes parked. This makes buses wait for long to take a turn creating traffic jam. Same is the scenario at the PMC bus stand.”

Railway authorities have prohibited buses from entering their premises outside the Shivajinagar railway station for eight hours in the day. As per PMPML officials such rifts between them and other government bodies is one of the important obstacles in their functioning and unless sorted out by proper dialogue the problems will continue to haunt the transport utility. Two maintenance workshops can accommodate 75 more buses. The number of actual buses with PMPML is 1,253. It also has 325 more buses which it has taken on rent. Thus only 861 out of 1578 have space inside the depots for parking,the remaining 717 have to be parked outside.