Mysuru: Fed up with repeated warnings for residents who park their vehicles on footpaths and vendors who encroach them, the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) has hit upon a unique idea to install bollards (a short post used to prevent traffic from entering an area) on the footpaths, making it a place exclusive for pedestrian movement.

These bollards have been installed on the footpath of Sahukar Chennaiah Road in Kuvempunagar where the footpath parking menace is high.

The road comes under Ward 21 that is represented by Corporator H.S. Nandeesh Preetham. The MCC has plans to extend similar facility for other footpaths too.

There are many types of bollards that are generally used. They are embedded bollards, surface mounted bollards, rebounding bollards and removable bollards. In this case, the MCC has used surface mounted bollards that are not removable.

Speaking to Star of Mysore, MCC Commissioner G. Jagadeesha said that footpaths are exclusive for pedestrians. “Usually we see vehicles parked on footpaths and some pushcart vendors too occupy the space to sell their wares and food. To prevent this, we came up with this novel idea of bollards amidst footpaths,” he said.

Jagadeesha said that the idea was mooted by the Traffic Police and the MCC had implemented it.

“We will extend the same facility to other footpaths, he added.

PAY-AND-PARK

The MCC has invited tenders to operate Pay-and-Park facility on D. Devaraj Urs Road and Ashoka Road, the city’s prime commercial hubs.

This is not the first time that the MCC is trying to introduce such a facility on the busy roads to ease parking crisis. On all earlier occasions, the proposal received cold response.

“Yes, tenders have been invited from interested parties to implement the pay and park facility. Whoever is interested in the tender must share the revenue with the MCC. The parking space will be allotted to those bagging the tender and the same will be operated for a fee that will be decided later,” he said.

On the lack of response for the tenders last couple of times, he said that the MCC was making a sincere attempt this time to get the system introduced on the stretch on an experimental basis.

“If there is no response for the tender, the MCC will implement it on its own,” he added.

He said that parking spaces on roads such as D. Devaraj Urs Road, Ashoka Road and Sayyaji Rao Road are being used by shop-keepers who own outlets there to park their vehicles. This deprives tourists and shoppers of parking facility on the roads and most of the cars parked on Devaraj Urs Road belong to shopkeepers, he said.