20 November,2020 06:18 AM IST | Mumbai | The Editorial
Cars parked outside Hotel Intercontinental at Marine Drive
The police are taking five-star hotels to task over illegal parking, a report in this paper has said. The extensive story, detailing yet another aspect to Mumbai's bugbear, the parking crunch, has stated that Mumbai cops have issued a stern verbal warning to five-star hotels which have been illegally parking guests' cars on the roads and contributing to traffic snarls.
Concentrating on the choked South Mumbai, cops stated that a number of hotels located in the tourist-heavy Colaba and Marine Drive area are on their radar. While tourist traffic is practically non-existent now, guests are coming into these hotels sporadically and the problem persists.
The warnings come as part of the traffic police's new initiative called, 'Towing and clamping Operation' which is self-explanatory and aims to free up space on roads.
Five-star hotels offer valet services but park vehicles on the roads outside, once their parking is full. They need to toe the line when it comes to parking guidelines. We have seen these mega facilities trying to strong-arm locals and steamroll traffic rules because of the money and muscle power some of them yield. They will need to buy pay and park slots in case their parking is full, or make some arrangements at the time of admitting guests.
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In fact, these warnings need to extend to all mammoth corporations across the city, who must be targeted for illegal parking.
This is a good time to get extra tough on violators as some sectors are yet to unlock. One has to also keep in mind that there are and will be many more private vehicles on the roads, so the parking issue will have to be addressed to deal with the bottlenecks. Let us see a spirit of cooperation and understanding so that we have no need for any escalation of action and roads are cleared in the best possible manner.
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