Rs 33-crore parking project to ease traffic woes near Delhi's Punjabi Bagh crematorium

NEW DELHI: South Delhi Municipal Corporation will develop an automated multilevel parking system at the Punjabi Bagh crematorium under a Rs 33.8-crore project. The second largest cremation centre in the city currently has the capacity to park 80-90 cars and the spillover parking often leads to traffic jams on Ring Road. The new facility will be able to cater to 225 vehicles at a time.
The crematorium is one of the largest such facilities in Delhi.It is situated on Ring Road along the Club Road flyover. “Since the facility is situated at a prime location and is easily accessible, this crematorium is being used by a large number of people from north and west Delhi areas,” an official said.
“Due to less capacity of existing surface parking within the crematorium, there is commonly a long queue of vehicles outside the crematorium resulting in traffic congestion on Ring Road along the existing flyover throughout the year,” the proposal earlier put forth by the municipal commissioner argued.
“The traffic congestion is likely to increase substantially in this stretch as the Bharat Darshan Park is under construction in the vicinity of the crematorium and this park is expected to be visited by a large number of people,” the proposal stated.
The consultant for the project had proposed three options of puzzle parking with 225 cars capacity, a tower parking system with 170 cars capacity and shuttle parking system with 160 cars capacity. “The puzzle parking system has been preferred due to higher parking capacity, queue length and traffic circulation around the parking,” the official stated.
Out of the Rs 33.8 crore, Rs 8.7 cr will be spent on the building work, Rs 14.1cr on parking equipment and Rs 10.9 cr on operations and maintenance of the parking system for 10 years. Earlier, the civic body had approved similar automated parking systems at Amar Colony, Greater Kailash and near Nizamuddin Basti. Automated parking systems are already operational in Green Park and Lajpat Nagar, while the parking project in Adhchini is nearing completion.