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Ravinder Makhaik
Scenic when viewed from a distance, the seductive hill city scattered around majestic deodar and oak forests has a dark underbelly. Driving on its narrow roads is a motorist nightmare. Pedestrians, on the other hand, have already been pushed over to walk in the drains.
Vehicles have sieged much of Shimla's public spaces, often ruining holidays of tourists and making the life of residents harder. The more built-up parking space the civic authorities create, the more chronic the traffic jams become.
The romance that the city conjured about lover's lanes, secluded picnic spots and well-maintained parks is history. Most of the roads reserved only for the pedestrians, including a large section of the Mall Road, have been overtaken by vehicular traffic.
A week ago, Chief Minister Jairam Thakur and country head of Asian Development Bank (ADB) Kenichi Yokoyama inaugurated a new 13-storied parking.
Constructed with Rs 82-crore loan funds drawn from ADB for beautification and infrastructure improvement, the parking can accommodate four buses and 850 small vehicles. At Rs 9.6 lakh, the space created for parking one vehicle is certainly way too expensive.
Shrinking public space
Expressing concern over the shrinking public spaces for children, senior citizens and the pedestrian, Hitanshu Jishtu, city-based architect planner, says, "Creating more parking space is not solving traffic congestion. The higher the density of the vehicles moving about over limited road space, the more it adds to the chaos." "With more and more public space getting used up for giving way to vehicular transport, nobody is even considering constructing playgrounds for children, parks and only pedestrian paths for senior citizens," he says.
Pvt over public transport
The smart city proposal of the Shimla Municipal Corporation in 2017 estimated a need for 14,500 car parking slots. However, there were only 5,791 slots available. The new parking facility, plus other small ones, make up for only 7,000 slots, which is less than half of what is needed.
For the 90-km road length that Shimla has for public transport purposes, the per car unit density is way too high. Tourist vehicles entering the city on weekends and holidays compound the problem.
In the city where residents and tourists like to walk, only 16 per cent of the motorable roads have footpaths. To encroach only upon pedestrian roads, the lawmakers ironically enacted the Shimla Road Users and Pedestrians (Public Safety and Convenience) Act, 2007, which opened some sections of even the Mall Road for vehicles. Influential people and VIPs were permitted to ply vehicles after being issued fee-based passes for these restricted roads where no vehicle was allowed earlier.
Anuradha Yagya, a Delhi-based development consultant and an alumna from the School of Planning and Architecture, in her paper 'Making a smart city in a fragile ecosystem: the case of Shimla' points out — "The availability of public conveyance is inadequate, with there being only 308 buses for public transport." The share of the public transport dropped from 65 per cent in 2005-06 to 49 per cent in 2012.
To register a new vehicle, it is now mandatory to declare under oath that the owner has parking space. Despite restrictions, vehicle ownership has risen by 23 per cent. The 2012 Shimla Comprehensive Mobility Plan Survey noted that the 18-km circular road, the city's main arterial road, was being used for on-street parking.
Walker woes
The pedestrian traffic at the busy Sanjauli Chowk is about 1 lakh people on a working day. Walkers face danger at Chhota Shimla, Kasumpti Chowk, Victory Tunnel and other junctions also. The observation was made six years ago and the traffic volume has gone up since.
To contain government vehicular traffic, Rajneesh Rana, a city-based IT entrepreneur, says, "Uber and Ola services can cater to many much of the needs of transport for government employees, which will drastically reduce the number of vehicles plying on the roads."
"Even comfortable staff buses would be a more efficient transport mode to reduce traffic load on roads," says Rana.
The district administration, soon after opening the new mega parking, drew a new plan to contain traffic congestion for the year-end festive week. All tourist vehicles were to be denied entry beyond the parking point.
The hotel industry threw up a stink and the very next day, the administration withdrew its order. With most hotels fully booked for the upcoming Christmas-New Year bash, Shimla prepares to survive another deluge of swanky SUVs, cars and oversized buses.