The Metropolitan Traffic Police Division, to ease traffic congestion, had recently declared corridor underpasses open for vehicular movement. However, instead of solving the traffic problem, the opening of these underpasses have added to it, as people have started to illegally park their vehicles along these roads.

And as this practice has remained unchecked, it is choking traffic further, beating the purpose as to why the underpasses were built in the first place.

The traffic police, under a three-month pilot project launched in March-end, had opened corridor underpasses recently at Balkumari, Bhatkeko Pul, New Buspark, Gopi Krishna, Setopul and Hanumansthan.

Hundreds of vehicles, including pick-up vans, four-wheelers, and two-wheelers, are parked along the road freely throughout the day—turning the corridors, which were constructed to provide relief to the main road sections, into illegal parking spots across the Capital.

Manoj Poudel, a sixth semester BIT student at KIST College who uses the Hanumanthan-Setopul corridor often to reach his college, told the Post, “The width of the corridor is quite narrow and vehicles parked on either side make it difficult for me to navigate my bike.”

The practice of illegal parking on corridor underpasses is not a recent problem, but the authorities have yet to take any concrete measures to curb this practice.

“Lanes in these corridors have many short and sharp bends at frequent intervals. Accidents become unavoidable when vehicles are parked on curbs, making them invisible to vehicles coming from the other side,” said Poudel.

Aware of the problem of illegal parking on corridor sections, Senior Superintendent of Police Basanta Kumar Pant, chief of the division, said, “We are apprised of the situation at these underpasses, and we shall soon take steps to regulate illegal parking there.”

When the Post inquired a man in his mid-thirties, who had just turned off the ignition and was parking his bike on the corridor section in front of Prabhu Bank in Bijulibazar, about his choice of a parking spot, he said, “There is no proper parking service or sufficient designated parking spots in the Capital. Everyone parks on the side of the road and so do I.”

The corridor section from Ratopul to Bijulibazar is mostly occupied by private vehicles belonging to employees of various offices in the area, and by people who visit these offices during office hours. The after-office hours are dominated by pick-up vans parked for the night.

Citing that using these corridors as parking areas is illegal, Superintendent of Police Rabindra Kumar Poudel, spokesperson of the division, told the Post, “It is illegal to park vehicles on the corridor section. We will take necessary action against those who are found to be flouting the rules.