Kancheepuram town has a new parking lot, thanks to the Ekambareswarar temple land opening up the property at Venkatadriraja Thottam. The ground has enough space to park at least 200 vehicles, which is enough to take in a portion of the daily influx of visitors to the temple town.
District Collector Kalaiselvi Mohan said the idea was to decongest the town. Muhurtham days (auspicious days when weddings are conducted) witnessed a large number of visitors since people prefer to shop for wedding saris on such occasions. “People come from Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh even to buy Kancheevaram silk saris and with no space to park, the roads get clogged with parked vehicles. At times, drivers take around 45 minutes to cross stretches that can otherwise be covered in 10 or 15 minutes,” she said.
“We have identified a few more empty plots to be used as parking lots and sign boards would be placed in prominent places to guide motorists to these spots,” Ms. Mohan added.
Superintendent of Police M. Sudhakar said that two roads — Kamarajar Salai and Gandhi Salai — where major shops were located usually get large number of vehicles and pedestrians have a tough time due to the parked vehicles. “Since the town has hundreds of temples, we cannot build flyovers as in the case of other towns as there are innumerable festivals associated with the temples and all their chariots and vahanams pass through various roads,” he said.
Mr. Sudhakar said that around 1,000 vehicles enter the town on ordinary days and this number doubles on weekends and it goes up multiple times during muhurtham days and temple festivals. “We are planning some kind of app to link parking lots with motorists coming to the town. It would be multilingual. Online payment options are being discussed,” Ms. Mohan added.
Nominal charges
Sources in the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments department said that one more parking lot with toilet and bathroom facilities was functioning at Lala Thottam near the yatri nivas. “Nominal charges have been fixed as parking fee. A few more properties have been identified. Such parking lots are operated in other cities as well,” the official said.
Vinoth Chandrasekar, a resident of Kancheepuram, said that multilevel parking lot could be planned on such open spaces. “Facilities must be created for local vehicles too. Commercial vehicles entering the town to reach the vegetable market and other markets should have separate parking spaces. Those vehicles too need to be segregated and regularised,” he said.
