Chandigarh: Stop car at gate and walk: PGI pill to ease parking woes

CHANDIGARH: To decongest its parking, the PGI has tried shuttle services and earmarked space for another multilevel parking, but parking lots are blocked with vehicles due to high volume of patients coming daily. Now, the PGI is trying to work on enabling a system that allows those who can walk by themselves to be dropped outside the PGI gate near the OPD.
“Many three-wheelers also come to drop patients in the hospital and keep on waiting for more passengers there. This also creates unnecessary traffic,” said Kumar Gaurav Dhawan, deputy director administration, DDA, PGI,
Despite one existing multilevel parking which has a capacity of around 600 cars and another upcoming new multilevel parking which will be able to give space to 680 cars, there is no parking left for additional vehicles. There are more than 10,000 daily footfalls in the OPD. “We can only generate awareness by asking people to drop their relatives who can walk on their own, outside the New OPD gate. We can work on how they can be easily brought inside the OPD by increasing the frequency of the shuttle services,” said the DDA. Six shuttle buses are plying after 10 minutes interval, making around 15 trips per day.
Recently, AIIMS, Delhi, started installation of GPS on shuttle buses to allow the patients to see in real time their arrival. The idea of using cycles for residents and some local faculty was also mooted to manage the parking of the faculty.
“The cycles were stolen and no one took responsibility. There were CCTV cameras installed to check such thefts, but that too did not work,” said a resident doctor in PGI. It takes around 15 and 30 minutes to find a slot with difficulty for both doctors and patients’ relatives. “To fit in the cars, the parking attendants ask the owners to keep them in neutral gear. But these cars become an obstruction for exiting. The contractors or the parking person is seldom seen to help,” said a patient’s relative.