Delhi's new parking policy: How to end the commuting nightmare
The government of Delhi has recently released a draft parking policy for the national capital. The draft policy proposes to “manage parking demand through realistic pricing of parking commensurate with the land value and other factors, shared parking and reduced on-street requirements”.
In other words, it seeks to levy higher parking charges in already-notified areas and monetise any previously non-notified areas. It does not, however, state the benefits that Delhi citizens will receive because of these enhanced parking charges.
Delhi has indeed a huge parking problem. It has 10 million vehicles (as on January 1, 2017). Of these, over 9 million are personal vehicles — 6 million motorbikes/scooters and another 3 million cars.
The newspapers are replete with incidents of fights and even deaths due to parking challenges in residential areas. Commercial hubs such as the Connaught Place and Nehru Place are overflowing with vehicles causing congestion on roads and sidewalks. According to the draft policy, the municipal corporations of Delhi have over 300 commercial parking lots that can cater to only about 75,000 vehicles.
Traffic from neighbouring states further compounds the problem on Delhi’s roads. The draft policy to its credit recognises lack of parking infrastructure, a critical gap that needs to be addressed, but it seems creating it is not under the ambit of the transport department.
While the draft policy seeks to address the ever-increasing parking problem in Delhi, it lacks a projection of Delhi’s needs by 2030. Moreover, despite paying more for parking their vehicles, citizens of Delhi will not be able to access parking on demand. The media is already speculating how this policy seeks to benefit the mafia which manages the parking concessions.
How did Delhi end up with so many vehicles on its roads? The simple answer — to commute — for work, for socialising and for recreation, in Delhi’s extreme weather conditions. Could commuting been done by any other means, by adequate and comfortable public transport? Well, yes.
Delhi’s town planners in their infinite wisdom forgot to plan and construct adequate commercial spaces which could meet the professional needs of citizens of Delhi closer to their places of residence. Thus, for decades people from various parts of Delhi commuted to the Central Secretariat and allied government offices, Nehru Place, Bhikaji Cama Place and Connaught Place for work; and with the growth of suburbs like Nodia and Gurgaon, the distances just kept increasing. Despite the introduction of the Metro trains and air-conditioned DTC buses, public transport is woefully inadequate to cater to the number of commuters.
The growth in the number of vehicles also had other unintended drawbacks, largely due to unimaginative town planners. Their designs of residential areas did not visualise car-owning citizens — many DDA housing complexes have parking for scooters only.
The planners could not imagine four-storey houses with each floor owning two or more cars. Thus, not only next door neighbours, but brothers living on different floors in the same building resorted to fighting not just for property but parking as well.
People figured out "jugaad" such as replacing one vehicle with another to continue to block their usurped parking spot.
Delhi’s draft parking policy is a timely reminder that like our planners from the pre-1991 era- the current ones too are focused on maximising revenue to the state rather than the current and future needs of the citizens. They have not even considered the fact that an increase in parking charges or lack of parking spaces will not deter citizens from buying more vehicles in the absence of alternative options for commuting.
So what Delhi needs is actually a policy for comfortable commuting. “Comfortable” is the operative word in the territory’s weather extremes. This policy needs to consider the changing world — of driverless cars, shared rides and other innovations.
What could be the key elements of this policy of comfortable commuting? While the Metro will remain a mainstay of this policy, attention needs to be paid to station to home/destination connectivity.
First, more buses. Delhi probably needs an additional 50,000 buses on its roads. They could be big ones like the red, green and orange ones that we see; and there could more of the short-haul 20-30 seaters like the perpetually overcrowded Metro feeder buses — maybe many more of the latter.
Delhi needs to work towards a goal, where a bus halts every minute at its thousands of bus stops. This will guarantee citizens quick service in an uncongested bus making public transport user-friendly.
Second, and this is a bit wild. Open the ride share market by doing away with the distinction of commercial and private registration for cars and two-wheelers; and allowing everyone to offer a ride for free or a fee.
The issues of loss of revenue can be easily addressed by a one-time fee when the vehicle is being purchased or when a driving licence is being issued or renewed; and by levying a fee through the ride share service provider.
The latter can also take care of security concerns.
A surfeit of modes of transport in the territory will allow citizens easy access to transport. Many car owners may hire drivers to offer ride share services when their cars are idle. With the easy availability of thousands of vehicles offering comfortable commutes, not only will tariffs come down, but the need to buy personal vehicles will also reduce. Vehicles on the move also mean lower requirements for long-duration parking spaces.
This also seems to be in line with the thinking of the Centre as this report suggests.
Third, Delhi needs to become the world capital of the "innovative and comfortable commute". It should officially welcome innovative technologies and equally innovative business models, unlike its treatment of the Ola and Uber a few months ago.
Delhi needs to experiment with driverless cars and bots/pods. It needs to become a partner city of initiatives like Uber Elevate which lets a commuter fly short distances cutting hours to minutes. It needs to open "Commuting of the Future hubs" in its engineering colleges and technical institutions providing venture funds, mentoring, technical assistance and test-beds. It also needs to ensure that its traffic lights never stop functioning — a nightmare for commuters who prefer to walk.
The sooner we adopt technologies of the future, the better it will be for citizens. These technologies will not only provide more public transport, but also reduce vehicular pollution in the medium-term.
Fourth, parking solutions need to be within the ambit of the policy of comfortable commuting. The territory’s government cannot penalise citizens for its own failure in providing options to commute comfortably which it tends to do every now and then through its parking policies.
Parking in Delhi needs some imaginative infrastructure solutions, or essentially the same multi-level parkings constructed more attractively. So, how about constructing a continuous parking space over the railway line from Old Delhi Railway Station via New Delhi Railway Station to Tilak Bridge?
Connected to Chandni Chowk, Connaught Place, Asaf Ali Road and ITO with covered corridors equipped with travellators and driveways for electric vehicles that we see at the airport, it could turn them into vehicle-free zones decongesting them completely.
The Railways could construct more level around this parking space and offer a mixed-use area; it could even provide citizens of Delhi an experience like High Line Park of New York. What a pleasure it would to be able to walk freely in Chandni Chowk — shopping, eating and praying.
Almost all of Delhi’s industrial estates are located next to railway lines. Thus, sections like that between Jhilmil and Prakash Industrial estates could be used not only to create parking infrastructure, but also facilities for workers such as hostels, messes and healthcare centres. And similar arrangement could be made at other places like DTC bus depots, Metro stations, the inter-state bus terminals and on sections of the Najafgarh drain which could be turned into potential mixed-use parking places that may also offer shopping, dining, offices and residences.
Fifth, but I guess the most fundamental one, infrastructure for pedestrians — clutter-free walkways, road crossing (foot over or under bridges or simple zebra crossings) every 500 metres or connecting the two bus-stops on both sides of the road.
Finally, the most radical one, as parking charges alone cannot generate the funds needed to construct and maintain such infrastructure, levying a cess of a rupee for each litre of fuel sold in Delhi can provide funds for making it the "capital of comfortable commuting".