Hawking zones, razing of illegal shops a must

G-North ward’s main headache is encroached footpaths and roads, which leave little space for both pedestrians and vehicles.  Proposals to ease the congestion are yet to be even considered for implementation.     The new street vendor policy states hawkers will be rehabilitated in a systematic manner in areas that will be demarcated as hawking and non-hawking zones. The criterion for marking hawking zones is that they should not affect pedestrian movement in the area. If implemented, the area outside Dadar station on the west side will be free of hawkers, leaving an uninterrupted path for pedestrians.      Civic officials say the town vending committee, which has been formed in the G-north ward, has identified spots to rehabilitate these hawkers and open areas only for pedestrians.      “We also have a plan to construct a multi-level hawker plaza in Dadar where some of these hawkers will be accommodated,” said civic officials.      There are also plans to demolish a few shops that have encroached on the footpaths near the foot-overbridge from the railway station, so that the bottleneck created there will be addressed.      However, two multi-level markets are ready but unoccupied in the ward. In Nana Patil Mandai, famously known as the Plaza market, a hawkers’ plaza was created at a cost of Rs 30 crore to relocate roadside hawkers. Till date, it continues to wear a deserted look. Barring the ground and first floors, from where the Dadar Janta cloth traders operate, the upper floors of this five-storey building are lying vacant. Nearly 800 shops remain unoccupied on these floors. Similarly, in Mahim, there is another market opposite the Lokmanya Vidya Mandir at Mapalavadi where a five-storey building is lying vacant as fish vendors from the area have consistently refused to shift into that building.      “If there are problems with using these markets then the issues should be addressed. What’s the point of spending money and not using them?” said an activist from the area.      As a solution to the shanties on the footpath, the BMC suggested reducing the width of the footpaths when they are repaired or re-laid so that they are not wide enough for slums to be built on. But several footpaths on which slums and sheds have come up have not been taken up for repairs, hence the encroachments continue to exist.      A pilot project of reducing the width of the Mahim Dargah footpath was undertaken and has shown good results, but it hasn’t been extended to other areas especially in front of Mahim station near the RBI staff quarters up to the Mahim church.      A proposal to connect the defunct Mahim subway using a road over bridge with escalators so that it can be used to help disperse pedestrian traffic from the busy LJ Road too has been pending.      “If the subway can be made usable a lot of pedestrian traffic today that crosses the busy Mahim junction will benefit, the authorities should look at the feasibility of the proposal and implement it,” said a traffic expert.      Civic officials said the parking issue in the area will be sorted out only after the BMC gets over 1,000 parking slots in the Kohinoor Square Building at Sena Bhavan. These slots are expected to resolve the parking problems in this area to a great extent, as most buildings here were constructed without any provision for parking inside the compound.      Similarly, other off-street parking slots will be available to the BMC in a few years in Chhabildas Lane, near Ideal Book Depot, officials said, adding these measures will ease congestion in the area to a great extent.