Relief from parking woes in sight

Ambika Sharma

Parking woes of the cantonment town of Kasauli will soon be mitigated as a project of Rs 16.50 crore, which was started last year, is in an advanced stage and is likely to be completed soon.

Being the lone such project to have been sanctioned for a cantonment, its completion will pave the way for systematic parking of tourist vehicles in the town. Kasauli receives thousands of tourists throughout the year and in the absence of adequate parking spaces vehicles are parked on roads. The lack of parking spaces has been hampering the tourist inflow and local residents have been keenly awaiting the completion of the project.

Initially, a multi-level parking has been proposed to ease traffic congestion in Kasauli where besides the bus stand on the ground floor, its three upper floors are also planned to accommodate vehicles. The cantonment board had passed a resolution for the project in July 2017. The National Green Tribunal (NGT) in its September 2018 order reduced the proposal to one-third, considering the fragile ecology of the area.

The NGT had also directed the state government to explore the option of running battery-operated vehicles or electric vehicles for the pick up-and-drop facility. This will help in addressing the problem of pollution in this fragile cantonment town, which has retained its old charm.

Local residents are, however, equally worried about narrow roads, as the Garkhal junction, where five roads converge, has become a major traffic bottleneck. Policemen have arduous times managing traffic during the peak tourist season, as there are only one-lane carriageways with virtually no scope of expansion.

Despite a manifold rise in population, the roads in the area have not been widened in the last several decades. The NGT had also directed the government to devise ways to ease traffic congestion at the Garkhal junction but the district administration and local politicians did not take the issue seriously.

The delay in building a bypass in Kasauli is proving to be a major hindrance, as people residing along the roads are forced to endure the noise of vehicles honking throughout the day. Heavy trucks, which arrive at the junction from the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh industrial area, aggravate the traffic chaos in the evening. At times, fire engines had got stuck while trying to negotiate their way through the narrow junction. Cases of big tourist vehicles getting stuck at the junction, leading to heavy traffic jams, are reported regularly.

KC Chaman, Deputy Commissioner, Solan, says decongesting the Garkhal junction is the need of the hour. He adds that an alternative bypass will be worked out in the coming days, as the area witnesses a huge tourist inflow during the summer.