MARGAO'S "SUFFOCATED" ROADS By Valmiki Faleiro When this column began on Nov 13 four years ago, it did with a piece on Margao. May I wind it up with two more on my hometown: on the twin and acute problems of traffic congestion and parking. Both are inter-linked, not exclusive to Margao, but are endemic to all of Goa's major towns. Margao, though, is advantageously placed to address them. Its MLA is the State's Chief Minister. Digambar Kamat, despite what his critics may say, has done much for Margao, perhaps more than all her MLAs since 1963. If he can successfully tackle this major headache dogging Goa's "commercial capital," the strategy can be replicated elsewhere in the State. In today's chaotic vehicular traffic scene, walking, riding and driving are becoming increasingly difficult in Goa's towns. It is no longer possible to cross a road, drive or park with any semblance of ease. We don't need consultants and no amount of Traffic Plans will help. Unless the elementary causes that warrant simple solutions are identified and implemented. (Kamat will recall that when he, 13 others and I constituted the Margao Municipal Council in June-1985, in a few months we managed to bring some semblance of order on Margao's roads. With free help from lecturers of Goa Engineering College and their enthusiastic students, who conducted traffic surveys at some crucial city traffic intersections, and the experience of then Goa Police Inspector-Traffic, Gurudas Zuwarkar.) Any observant road user knows that private buses and off-street parking are the root causes of traffic congestion in downtown Margao. Let us consider the latter first. Parking on narrow lanes and double parking on slightly broader streets is the prime cause of daily traffic snarls. Off-street parking reduces the effective carriageway to a single lane for two-way traffic. And everybody's in a mighty hurry! The problem cannot be wished away overnight. Motorists also cannot be blamed for haphazard parking. They have no choice. With the public transport system in a mess (it takes an hour to get across a short distance, as say from Betul, Cavelossim, Cuncolim or Curchorem to Margao), people are forced to use their own vehicles. Once here, they find no place to park their two- or four-wheelers. Most places they need to visit, including schools and government offices, are concentrated in a small central area, with narrow lanes and streets. One could not expect people to park at the Konkan Railway parking lot and walk to central Margao. People have no option but to be part of the parking mess. Margao fortunately has three State-owned sites in the downtown area: the old Tempo stand, old fish market and old bus terminus. Develop multi-level parking lots at these three places and provide FREE parking in them. Then make off-street parking in the entire central commercial area steep-tariff PAID parking. Half the traffic congestion in downtown Margao will disappear overnight. Margao's parking needs for the next half century will also have been taken care of. The move to decongest downtown Margao in the mid-1980s was a good decision. The bus terminus and fish market were shifted away from the town centre, to the comunidade paddies near Old Market. In this market complex, a substantial area was acquired for parking, but is yet to be developed. A former Town Planning minister sought to commercialize it. With many public offices shifted to the SGPDA complex, there is an urgent need to develop the parking lot between Osia and NH-17. Several public complexes have come up in this area. District & Sessions Courts, Nehru Stadium, Swimming Pool & Indoor Stadium, Ravindra Bhavan. All have limited parking provision. Acquire the patches of paddies, uncultivated since the 1960s, between the Colva traffic isle and Ravindra Bhavan, esp. those on the south side, before they are converted and commercialized. These patches will serve as a buffer and provide future parking needs in the area. And when the Collectorate and Hospicio are shifted, ensure that no public offices that attract substantial volumes of visitors are brought in their place. For the heritage Hospicio edifice, an apt reuse would be a South Goa archives office, with facilities for preservation and digitization. (To conclude.) (ENDS) ============================================================ The above article appeared in the Herald, Goa, edition of November 08, 2009
