'Declare roads adjacent to parking sites as no-parking zone'

New Delhi: In order to ensure a smooth rollout of the new parking policy, Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal on Friday directed authorities to declare road stretches adjacent to the existing parking sites as "no parking zone".

The L-G issued several other directions at a meeting he chaired, which was attended by Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot, Chief Secretary M M Kutty, PWD Principal Secretary Ashwani Kumar and other senior officers.

Baijal also asked them to focus on ensuring adequate parking for people to minimise "inconvenience" during the implementation of the new policy.

The policy introducing charges for parking in residential areas, and increasing it for road and street-parking in the city.

The charges would be decided by civic agencies on the basis of a Base Parking Fee -- to be revised annually.

"The L-G directed all concerned agencies to identify those stretches and declare them as 'no parking zone' where multi-level parking/stack parking/surface parking exists, so that traffic congestion due to unauthorised parking on these roads can be eased," the L-G office said in a statement.

It stated the L-G also wanted congested road stretches to be mapped by local bodies to identify adequate existing or "potential" parking sites in their vicinity for their development.

"He stated that if no nearby sites are available, then those at a reasonable distance be identified which can be put in use through integration with a shuttle service," the statement also stated.

Baijal stressed that in view of the large number of vehicles and limited parking sites, a priority should be given to upgrade multi-level stack parking instead of surface parking.

According to the policy draft, the civic agencies will consult RWAs before deciding the parking charges and mode of management of parking in residential areas including outsourcing of the collection of parking fees.

The policy proposes that on-street parking for the first hour would be priced at least twice that of off-street and will increase exponentially with duration.

A government official said that the Delhi transport department will make the draft of the policy public in the next 14-15 days, adding that once made public, people can give suggestions for around 30 days.