Parking charges increased to ‘create more parking sites’

NEW DELHI: East Delhi may not have proper parking infrastructure in place but the municipal corporation has proposed a hike in parking charges nonetheless.

ARIJIT SEN/HT FILE

By hiking parking charges, the corporation wants to discourage the use of cars for short distances.

Going by East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) commissioner SS Yadav’s proposals, car owners may have to pay R10 for parking a car for half an hour, R20 for half an hour to one hour, R50 for up to three hours and R20 for every additional hour after that.

An extra 50 per cent charges will be added to the bill during peak hours of 5pm-9pm. Currently, the charges are a flat R10 for 10 hours.

Yadav said not only are the current parking rates too low but by hiking them, they will be discouraging the use of private cars for short distances. “The price of every commodity has gone up. The revenue generated will be used for creating more parking facilities,” he said.

The corporation has also proposed to increase the monthly car parking pass from R500 to R1,500.

Yadav said that in the past six months, the number of surface parking sites had risen from 15 to 50 and by next year, it will rise to 100. Areas where new parking sites have been set up include Nirman Vihar, Preet Vihar, Yamuna Vihar and Laxmi Nagar, among others.

He spoke about the plan to build multi-level car parking-cum-commercial projects in public private partnership at Babarpur, the toll tax office near Apsara Border and the Anaj Mandi in Shahdara. The process of appointment of a consultant has already been initiated.

Source: Hindustan Times, Delhi Edition, (07.12.2012)

Pollution makes city smog worse every year

Source: Hindustan Times, Delhi edition

More cars, fewer roads choke cities

New Delhi: A recent government report has concluded that congestion in urban areas has risen, thanks to the disproportionate increase in road length and vehicular growth. Road length has increased by 3.3% in the past decade, but vehicles have risen by 10%.
The latest Basic Road Statistics Report — prepared by the transport research wing of the highways ministry — says this mismatch “has resulted in the saturation of road capacities on many stretches.” The report cites while 59% of India’s total road length is rural roads, urban roads account for only 9%.
According to the report, the growth of cars, jeeps and taxis in the past decade has surpassed two-wheelers. During 2001-2011, annual car growth was 10.5% against 9.1% of two-wheelers.
Urban experts say the concentration of vehicles in urban areas and particularly cars is one of the major reasons behind traffic jams. “About 80% vehicles ply on urban roads. Besides, more people are buying cars since their prices have seen little increase along with the rise in disposable income and easier auto financing schemes,” said Yash Sachdev, an urban transport expert.
The report put the total road length in India at 47 lakh km (as on March, 2011) against 40 lakh in 2007. Of this, about 54% is paved and much lower as compared to Japan, Korea, the UK and the USA. The ministry’s data claims over 90% of the roads in all categories are “motorable”.
The major push in increase in road length has been due to construction of rural roads. Between 2007 and 2011 the road network increased by 6.74 lakh km and the largest increase was in the length of rural roads at 3.56 lakh km.
Nevertheless, there was substantial increase in the urban road category at 1.11 lakh km, whereas there was incremental rise in NHs, state highways and project roads at 4,344 km, 11,663 km and 20,034km, respectively.
The report puts country’s expressways/motorways length around 227 km.

Source: Times Of India, Delhi Edition, (17.08.2012)Original Article

Buses over cars, Delhi in fast lane

Delhiites prefer their cars to public transport. With 2.1million cars registered till March 2011, Delhi has the highest car population in the country, according to a latest report of the road transport ministry. Next in line are Bangalore (710,852) and Chennai (598,708).
Surprisingly, Mumbai — the financial capital of the country— only has 562,526 registered cars.
That public transport is not a priority can be gauged from the fact that as compared to cars, the number of buses registered in Delhi till 2011 was a mere 45,000.
At 7.2 million, Delhi's vehicle population exceeds the combined vehicle population of Chennai (3.4 million), Kolkata (444,718), Lucknow (1.2 million) and Mumbai (1.8 million).
“At this rate the number of car would double by 2020. How much more road can you build in the city? ... The Centre needs to aggressively scale up public transport and discourage usage of cars during peak hours,” said Anumita Roychoudhury, executive director, Centre for Science and Environment.
The government's emphasis to promote public transport does not seem to have cut much ice. Of the 142 million motor vehicles registered in India till March 2011, the share of two-wheelers, cars, jeeps and taxis was 121 million and the share of buses was just 1.6 million.
Between 2001 and 2011, while the increase in the number of cars and two-wheelers has been over 50%, the share of buses in the overall vehicles registered has gone down to 1.1% in 2011 from 1.2%, in 2001.
Among the states, Maharashtra (17.4 million) accounted for the largest share of the total registered motor vehicles in India followed by Tamil Nadu, UP, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh.
Another worrying trend, according to the report, is the mismatch between the rise in the number of motor vehicles and the growth rate of road network. Between 2001 and 2011, the growth rate of registered motor vehicles was almost three times the growth rate of the road network.

Source: Hindustan TImes, Delhi Edition, (14.08.2012)Original Article