Don Bosco students draw blueprint for Margao traffic

KARSTEN MIRANDA [email protected] At a time where entering Margao with your vehicle is a headache with the narrow roads getting even narrower with vehicles parked on the side and heavy traffic, a group of students have taken it upon themselves to study the city’s traffic woes to come up with a solution. Their project on the design of the multi-story parking structure for Margao included studying the parking pattern in the city including number of vehicles i.e. 2-wheelers and 4-wheelers parked on the street, localities and available parking lots. It also comprised of identifying places for parking structures, detailed planning of parking structures including deciding the capacity required, number of floors, access facilities, etc. Furthermore, the students drafted a suitable plan for a multi-level parking structure and designed the structure using structural software. This was the group project of the final year civil engineering students and incidentally the 􀏐irst batch to graduate from Don Bosco Engineering College, Fatorda. Xelton Travasso, Keshav Naik, Rajal Sardessai, Shanu Gawali and Mazahar Shah were the students in the group and their guide was professor Jeffery Valadares. For the project, the students came up with a detailed analysis on the existing problems in Margao including the width of every road and the width after taking into account the space cars parked on the side occupy, the volume of all kinds of vehicles entering and exiting every Margao road and the location of commercial, government and residential establishments and the city’s various traffic bottlenecks. The students sought the assistance of Margao traffic police inspector P Shirvoikar and DySP traffic Gurudas Mhapne for their research and they plan on submitting the same project to the Margao Municipal Council shortly. A part of their solution is the multi pay parking building erected in the centre of the city and the second part of the solution is radical changes to the way traffic is managed. “The students through their project have proposed to ban parking in the vicinity of the multi-level pay parking structures thus eliminating the problem of congestion and accidents. This will also provide an increased carriageway for moving traffi c,” said Professor Valadares. The project envisages that cycles be provided for vehicle owners to travel close distances with a reasonable fare, further adding to the revenue generated and also aiding in health improvement. “One of the benefits is that it will lead to clean roads to promote walking, thereby improving health of people and reduction in pollution on streets caused by unnecessary movement of vehicles,” added Shanu Gawali. The students have pointed out that there are 3 suitable sites for their proposed parking structures in Margao but feel that the site at the old KTC bus stand opposite Margao Police station is the best suited. “The old bus stand area being at the centre part of Margao has easy access to the entry and exit of the parking structure making it a favourable location,” added Xelton Travasso in the report. “The other two sites – the old pick up stand opposite Royal Foods and the old fish market near Cine Late have bottle necked roads causing a hindrance to the entry and exit of vehicles to and from the structure,” said Keshav Naik . “The multi pay parking building will be a ground plus 7 storey building. The ground floor will accommodate only two wheelers and has a capacity for 123 vehicles. 24 cars can be parked on each floor that is a total of 168 cars,” explained Mazahar Shah. The structure will be able to accommodate a signicicant part of those vehicles parked on streets throughout the day during of􀏐ice hours, from 9 am to 5 pm. The proposed multi-pay parking project will have an LED screen installed at the entrance of every level of the structure that indicates the parking slots that are already occupied and those available for parking. The key features of the screen include- 1) The top three rows indicating the date, time and temperature in real time. 2) A, B, C represents the three lanes of parking.3) The green light indicates slots which are open for parking. 4) The red lights indicates slots already occupied by vehicles. The functioning of the green and red lights is governed by a laser mechanism installed at each parking slot. The laser is emitted by a device installed at the centre of each parking slot and effective up to a height of 30 cm from the ground. “The advantages of the LED screen is that it provides convenience to the driver in finding an exact open parking slot, thus saving time and avoids unnecessary movement of vehicles on levels to find open slots, thus reducing congestion on passage lanes,” said Rajal Sardessai. The project further proposes to generate revenue in a systematic way to recover the cost of construction thereafter for the maintenance of the facility by deciding suitable parking fees. Their project also aims at eradicating the city of the ill-effects of parking like congestion, accidents, pollution, obstruction to fire-fighting operations; for which they provided an indepth overview. Out of all of the key issues, the main issue they have highlighted is that of street parking. “On-street parking is observed on almost all the roads. Many cars and two wheelers are seen parked on either side of the roads. Both angular as well as parallel type of parking is prevalent. Consequently, almost one lane of the carriageway is taken up, in turn creating traffi c. This has reduced the capacity of the carriageway and endangering pedestrians and motorists alike,” said Mazahar Shah. Professor Valadares concurred and pointed out that the frontage of almost all the roads in this area has been converted into commercial land without taking into account the demand for parking of vehicles. The students believe that planned parking space and reforms will help the city manage its burgeoning traffic problems