Your Space: Food stalls should follow civic and traffic rules, say Pune residents

While khau gallies near college campuses provide a recreation space for students, it mostly ends up as a public inconvenience. Readers suggest steps to ensure youngsters enjoy their free time at these spots without disturbing the neighbourhood

Set up food outlets at selected spots

Food stalls near MIT College in Kothrud. (HT FILE PHOTO)

One possible solution could be to establish designated areas for food outlets near college campuses. These areas should be strategically located away from residential areas to minimise disturbances to citizens. Also, there should be certain rules and regulations for food outlets, such as limiting the hours of operation and ensuring that they comply with noise pollution standards. These steps would help to reduce the impact on residents while still allowing students to enjoy their free time. Local authorities can work with college administration to encourage students to use public transportation or carpooling to reduce traffic congestion around the food outlets. There can also be an open forum for giving space for open dialogue and feedback between residents and students to help address concerns and come up with mutually agreeable solutions. This could involve setting up community forums or establishing feedback mechanisms such as suggestion boxes.

Dewang Goswami

Build designated pedestrian streets

As a student, it is inevitable that we will travel to places to have some time for ourselves and explore these spaces we are studying at the same time. This is specially for those who are not localites. As students, we never mean to bring the traffic to a halt, but parking of private vehicles and autorickshaws at the same time causes congestion on narrow roads of the city. Having more designated pedestrian streets and not just popular corners of the city could be a solution. Instead of allowing vendors near bars, cafes and restaurants near Koregoan Park and Symbiosis street areas, more adjustments and facilities need to come up for a better solution instead of stopping students to travel and try the delicacies of a new city.

Garima Ranjan

Run legal food stalls

While we encourage local vendors, it should be in alliance with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) to grant permissions with valid parking areas. Vendors come under the purview of PMC and the civic authorities need to be proactively monitoring such places and take necessary actions as residents should not be impacted due to such vendors. It’s been observed that garbage collection/disposal is also not done properly and is also questionable and ource of environmental hazards. Authorities should address these issues.

Aditya Patil Kumar

Disallow stalls on footpaths

Let the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) allocate a few khau gallies not on footpaths, but at corner places near college campuses. They should be allocated a small space per vendor, say 6x4, wherein hygiene is maintained as these vendors do not need a lot of space to set up shop. PMC has the capacity to rent out these places. They should allocate these places in such a way that noise, traffic and land can be minimised.

Rachna Aggarwal

Fine traffic violators

Youngsters and students cannot be stopped from exploring street foods and street shops. They will go out and explore. To find an adjustment point, the authorities should have dedicated parking spots for smooth traffic flow. Traffic police should monitor these spaces and fine traffic violators. Designated spots should be given to vendors to set up their businesses and specific corners should be designated for khau gallies. Hence, there will not be any clusters on footpaths.

Shital Jadhav

Give time slots to run outlets

The vendor problem comes under the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and they should look into the matter of khau gallies. Designated space should be given to run businesses on streets. As citizens also visit these stalls apart from students, parking spots and timings should be given by authorities for different areas within the city. Khau gallies are not just outside universities, but near residential areas also and should be run under rules and regulations to ensure it is not a public inconvenience.

Shriya Menkudle