In smart idea,Corporation will fix parking first

CHENNAI: After a dilemma lasting three years, Greater Chennai Corporation has finalised a plan to first construct a multilevel vehicular parking facility before building a pedestrian plaza in T Nagar, the city’s commercial hub and the civic body’s test site for the Centre’s Smart Cities Mission.
With Chennai Smart City Ltd on Wednesday approving all proposed projects, the corporation’s next step will be to float tenders.
TOI had in 2014 reported a quandary in Ripon Buildings, in which certain officials believed that it was prudent to decongest T Nagar by first taking up the parking project, to the consternation of senior officials keen on the pedestrian project because it would save time and funds.
“There is a strategic plan now to deal with traffic and parking,” an expert in the smart city projects said. “A new parking management system will be introduced across the city by the time the parking facility is completed.”
Corporation officials said this order of work is the safest and most practical — and the least likely to draw public ire.
“Once we complete parking facility, work on other projects will cause no inconvenience,” said a corporation official in charge of the projects.
When the corporation proposed the Panagal Park parking facility in an estimated time-frame of three years, residents said it would block the façade of the park. So the civic body moved the location to a site on the corner of Thanikachalam Road and Thyagaraja Road. Officials said it will take a year to build.
In the new location, the Rs 36-crore facility will have two basement floors for two-wheelers, and seven floors, including the ground floor, for cars. It will hold 250 cars and 500 two-wheelers, a scaled down version of the Panagal Park plan.
“It will be fully automated and an improved version of the Wallace Garden facility [the city’s first multi-level parking centre],” the official said.
The corporation can simultaneously start work on the pedestrian project, from Thyagaraja Road to Boag Road and from Boag Road to Anna Salai, experts said.
“We will soon start work on storm water drains, parks and LED streetlights,” a smart city board member said. “We’ll work on the roads last.”