Answering to the woes of the metro commuters in Pune, the Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation has said that it is speeding up the process of arranging for parking spots for vehicles of the commuters on both corridors of the Pune Metro in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, The Indian Express reported.
The commuters have often raised the issue of the lack of parking spaces at the metro stations.
MahaMetro Chairman and Managing Director Shravan Hardikar told The Indian Express that the commissioners of both Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) met on August 23, 2023. It was decided that the PMC and PCMC will together develop parking reservations near the metro service on both corridors.
MahaMetro’s plans for parking infrastructure
The MahaMetro officials have admitted that the original Detailed Project Report (DPR) had no provision for parking facilities. “When the DPR was made, the multi-modal development management concept did not exist. The multi-modal concept has now been incorporated as part of the designs. We are focusing on multi-modal integration,” Hardikar said.
He added that the teams concerned with Metro stations are now developing “multi-modal hubs”. They are developing parking infrastructure wherever they are getting parking space. As per Hardikar, MahaMetro has found space at nine locations on both corridors where it is developing parking infrastructure.
“On all these nine spaces, we are going to develop parking infrastructure on a pilot basis,” Hardikar told The Indian Express. In Pune, the infrastructure will be developed outside stations like Shivajinagar and the civil court, while in Pimpri-Chinchwad, it will be developed outside PCMC headquarters and at Vallabhnagar. “These are not reserved lands but they remained vacant while developing Metro stations,” Hardikar added.
The MahaMetro will also work to build parking reservations near metro stations on the corridors. We will work with PMC and PCMC to develop these parking reservations to accommodate the vehicles of commuters,” he said.
Presently, the focus is more on having accommodation for two-wheelers. Hardikar said there is still time for four-wheelers to turn to metro service. It is a long process and will take time. We will have to create infrastructure in a systematic manner. Initially, we expect two-wheeler riders to convert to metro and then, slowly, the [owners of] four-wheelers would take to the metro service,” he added.