THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024
The entrance to the South Goa Planning and Development Authority (SGPDA) car parking ‘facility’, which doubles up as the Margao fair grounds as well, is a car owner’s nightmare and probably an auto mechanic/body shop owner’s dream come true. The entrance opposite the complex that houses the SGPDA office seems more like an afterthought than a properly-designed gateway.
Each day, at least 4-5 cars get damaged on the crumbling concrete pavement that sticks out into the already-narrow entrance way. This pavement extends way past the compound wall, forming an illusion of a wider pathway, thus misleading drivers. With vehicles parked on both sides of the narrow road, and a continuous stream of traffic passing through, taking a turn wide enough to enter the lot with your car unscathed is close to impossible.
There’s a tall wall, followed by a shorter wall that ends before the broken pavement, making it difficult to judge where the entrance begins. As a result, I scraped my car while entering the parking lot, and while I was still there, three other drivers accidentally did the same thing. The situation only gets worse at night, and I spoke to several other car owners who work in the vicinity, who told me they scratched their vehicles at the same spot.
It is very frustrating that our government cannot make basic amenities such as a parking facility convenient and safe to use. Firstly, for a parking lot that is located opposite the INOX theatres and the complexes that house several government offices, the condition of the space is disgraceful - the ground is not even, construction debris and rocks lie around in heaps, red dust flies everywhere and in the absence of a parking attendant, people park their cars very poorly and inefficiently, some taking up the space of two cars, or boxing others in.
The entrance to this road is another death-trap; the road drops into a culvert on the right side, and the gaping hole is not even cordoned off. I urge the SGPDA to look into this lapse, and also to reconstruct the entrances to the parking lot, and make them more user-friendly.
