Park Heavens

The other day I had borrowed the bike from my friend. It is a 2005 model Hayabusa. It is a fine biking experience. The only grudge is these narrow roads. These don't allow me to open the full throttle. Frankly the speedster in me is still alive and at times makes me crave for that high speed action. Why can't Government Authorities make wider roads, like those we see in all those English movies, for us to have the ultimate pleasure of extreme speed? But on the second thought we do have enough wider roads in Delhi. Space wasted by parking the vehicles wrong, makes them appear narrower. Are we parking the vehicles at the right place or are we parking properly. Do we actually give it a thought. I have noticed the way people are parking their vehicles (this includes the momentary halts too, be it for buying a pack of candies). They can be categorized under 4 different categories.

1. Around the Corner Parking: This is a phenomena that we see at the end of every street. The corners of the streets are the favorite meeting spots for the young boys. Parking your bike outside a Pan shop or a confectionary shop at the corner of the street to spend some time there with your neighborhood friends is like a ritual. Another such defaulter is the auto stands. In India if it is an auto stand it has to be right at the juncture of two connecting roads. What we do not realize here is that the turn is a very crucial part of a road/street. This is where traffic have to slow down to maintain the balance and control on the vehicle while turning. If there is a vehicle parked right at the corner, the driver will have to slow down further. This will contribute to the traffic jam on all the roads at that junction. We all hate traffic jams but do we ever notice our contribution to these jams. I seriously think that we don't. The same can be controled by bringing more clearly defined laws arround it. We can learn a lot from the international parking laws about how clear a law should be.

2. Zigzag Parking: In front of any big store where there is no parking nearby, people tend to park on the road in front of the store.

Parking, majority of the times is not done in an organized manner. The effect of this is that parking uses a lot more than the required road. This contributes to the traffic congestions. In my opinion, we should not park on the road in first place. Rather consider walking few steps by parking vehicle in a designated parking place closest to the store. Walking after all is a good exercise you know. We should take the responsibility of parking in an organized manner even if we have to park on the road. Laws against the obstructive parking are there, but we know the level of enforcement for such laws. Though I would still like to know what the penelties for such parking offences are. I’ll really appreciate if someone can share this kind of information.

3. Banana Peel Parking: This is the type of parking which is made on both sides of the road. At times there would be more than one row of the parked vehicles. An 80 feet road is easily reduced to 60. Just imagine getting a one lane road to drive while actual road is sufficient enough to ply 3 lanes.

4. Median Parking: This type of parking (usually the momentary halts) is seen in the streets. The other day on my way home from the office I saw this guy on the motorcycle. He stopped in front of a shop, I guess to pickup a bottle of cold drinks. He sure was in some hurry, for he stopped right at the center of the road. The bike was looking like a median made to divide the street for two way traffic. Now I think was it really going to take the whole lifetime to park the bike at the side of the road. Right the halt was only for a minute or two, but these two minutes cause the road blocks. Once again the question is why we keep doing these things. We like ourselves to be addressed as educated and sensible men but I don't think this kind of misconduct can put us in this category. We should think about it.

I'll be writing more on this issue in some time. Meanwhile I'll be cribbing a littile more. My blog http://jamroad.blogspot.com/ talks about few things which we do not notice but which contribute to more traffic jams.