Will the Mysore City Corporation Council give its nod for introducing a pay and park system on D. Devaraj Urs Road, which has been facing a serious parking crisis?
The people of Mysuru have been hearing about the pay and park scheme which was never introduced despite being proposed an umpteen number of times over the years. The MCC’s lack of will in introducing the system was cited as the ‘sole reason’ why the parking crisis on the road has not found a solution even today.
The pay and park subject is coming up for a detailed discussion at the council meeting on Friday.
The MCC’s five-year tenure will come to an end in the next few months. The question remains about whether it will introduce the system, which was only discussed all these years.
Mayor Shivakumar told The Hindu: “The proposal is being placed before the council on Friday for discussion. We are committed for the introduction of pay and park on D.D. Urs Road. I’m hoping that it will get through.”
This is not the first time the subject is being discussed in the Council. The councillors had debated the subject but it eluded consensus. In fact, the MCC Council had approved the pay and park proposal a decade ago but the initiative has not been introduced even today in the absence of consensus and resistance from a section of the business community despite the parking woes on the road.
The Mayor said he was confident of getting a consensus on the issue. The busy road stretch has bays where about 200 cars can be parked. However, about 100 cars, purportedly belonging to shop owners and those running businesses in the surrounding locality, are always found parked there during business hours, denying rightful parking space for shoppers and tourists.
In the past, there have been instances of elected representatives expressing their reservations on bringing in pay and park, arguing that it would cause an unnecessary burden on the public. However, locals and stakeholders of the tourism industry argue that it is the public who are being put to hardships because of the delay in taking decisions on addressing the parking problem on the road.
Locals were of the view that a nominal fee for parking with better management of the initiative can help in easing the crisis to some extent since even the traffic police face difficulty in easing congestion on the road during weekends and holidays.
