I stay 1.5 km from "Mall Lane" of Gurgaon but absence of any local conveyance like a local bus or an autorickshaw (barring cycle rickshaws) forces me to drive my car everytime I plan to visit it. And I am clueess as to why it almost always turns out to be a weekend. End result being an endless chagarin of being enqueued in the parking lanes and paying INR 30/- atleast twice because we often go to two malls and each not within striking close distance of each other.
I wonder what the cost of each mall is but what I can see is atleast 2 flights of automatic escalators on each floor of every mall. I wonder if the mall developers can add a similar version of the same called "travelator" outside their mall (and also across the road, under the ground), it might solve the problem of parking woes for commuters and also benefit the developers with better economic returns. I'll explain in short what a travelator is. A travelator is a horizontol escalator. A travelator is used worldwide to help peopl avoid walking on unavoidable short distances between two points such as airport and metro station, between two shopping malls or between two underground bus stations where creating a bus route may not be possible. Now, especially with Metro station installed in the mid of MGF and DT City Centre and to be operational by Jan '10, people coming to malls will have no option but to walk to other malls which shall reduce their willingness to visit more than 2 at a time. If these 'travelators' are installed, it shall facilitate them to visit more malls in a single visit resulting in higher footfalls for all the malls, increased chances of each prospect hitting a shop having his desired product as well as higher 'impulse' purchases- resulting into higher transaction per visit and an overall boost to the volumes. All this will ultimately result in reduced payback period for investors (shopkeepers as well as developers).
Therefore it needs to be worked out whether what shall be the cost of such 'travelators' and also whether it can be access controlled and users can be made to pay for the use (which most would pay). Also, if the 'travelators' can be extended to a distance on both sides of mall lanes till a point where ample parking space can be created, then it shall work as another facilitator for drive-in folks who often dread visiting this place because of reasons mentioned at the beginning.
