Weekend challenge for Nehru ‘park’ing
The parking lot at the Nehru Zoological Park accommodates 250-300 cars, 50 buses and 500 two-wheelers and is inadequate to handle the weekend and holiday rush.
Visitors have to park their vehicles outside, on the roads, which causes traffic congestion.
P. Venu, the parking lot contractor, says that with the summer holidays the number of visitors will go up “but parking arrangements for more vehicles hasn’t been done. We have requested the curator many times to extend the parking area and allot us the one near the administrative office, but she has kept on denying us.”
To this, M. Abhinandan, a resident of Kondapur who visited the zoo park on Sunday, was annoyed at having to park his car outside the zoo.
“Due to lack of parking space inside, I had to park my vehicle on the road. Who is responsible if somebody damages my car or if somebody plays a prank and deflates the tyres? The authorities should make immediate arrangements to increase the parking space,” he said.
Another parking vendor, on condition of anonymity, said, “The area used for parking is not good as the road is a kucha road and dust rises continuously which leads to breathing problems. The authorities promised to lay the BT road on the entire stretch but they have failed to do so till now.”
He points out that there is no separate exit gate for vehicles, and buses, cars and bikes have to enter and leave the same way, which leads to congestion, especially on weekends
J. Badreshwar, assistant commissioner of police (traffic) Charminar, blames vehicles parked on the main road outside the zoo for creating traffic problems. “Despite our insistence, the zoo authorities haven’t paid any heed. We have issued challans to the vehicle owners for parking on main roads,” he said.
Zoo officials did not respond to our attempts to contact them.