Chennai Corporation on the lookout for 110 sites to create parking slots

The directive comes after the state finance department, on Tuesday, sanctioned Rs 2,000 crore for comprehensive integrated parking management project, which was announced in the State budget for the financial year 2019-2020. Funds for the project is expected to be released from the Central government.

Following the State’s nod, Chennai Corporation Commissioner G Prakash held a meeting with the zonal executive engineers and other officials, on Wednesday, and directed them to identify land in their jurisdiction for the parking lots.

An engineer, who was a part of the meeting said that the Commissioner has asked them to identify 10 vacant land parcels in each core city zones like Tondiarpet, Royapuram, Thiru Vi Ka Nagar, Anna Nagar, Teynampet, Kodambakkam and Adyar. “For the eight added zones, the concerned executive engineers have been asked to identify five vacant land parcels each,” an official said.

Sources claimed that the Commissioner has also sought details of vehicle density, congestion, survey number and roads surrounding the identified land. The off-street parking would include multi-level parking and underground parking based on the location of the vacant land.

Another engineer said that preference would be given to plots owned by the civic body. “If no such land is available, they are directed to consider land parcels owned by other government agencies including temple lands,” the engineer said.

If they are unable to find either appropriate land owned by the Chennai Corporation land or government land for the multi-level car parking, they would consider using playgrounds to create the parking space. In such a case, the civic body will construct underground parking facilities while retaining the actual use of playgrounds.

The engineers have been given 10 days to submit a report about the available land.

“Once the reports from the zones are tabled, we will appoint consultants to study the feasibility of constructing off-street parking facilities and prepare a detailed project report (DPR),” a senior Corporation official said.

Meanwhile, the civic body is set to commence on-street parking management system across the city as the private firm appointed to carry out the project under Smart City Mission has completed developing a mobile phone application for it. Even though the project was proposed to be implemented along 378 bus route roads in Chennai, the civic body has planned to launch the on-street parking on Anna Nagar Second Avenue, Besant Nagar Sixth Avenue, Marina and Purasawalkam during the first phase. On 378 roads, 12,047 cars can be parked and the civic body stands to earn Rs 20 per hour as fee from vehicles to be parked at these slots. 

“As is the case with on-street parking, we will collect users will be charged for off-street parking,” the official added.

Meanwhile, the Chennai Corporation is constructing a multi-level car parking facility at the junction of Thyagaraya Road and Thanikachalam Road in T Nagar at an expense of Rs 36.54 crore and has identified another location on Sivagnanam Street in the same locality for another parking lot. The facility in Thyagaraya Road, can accommodate nearly 550 two-wheelers and 250 cars.