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There should be no free parking in city: expert

Wednesday, 27 November 2013 05:12 administrator
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The Hindu             27.11.2013

There should be no free parking in city: expert

Instead of providing parking spaces in big places, we should identify smaller places to do so, says T.G. Sitharam of the Indian Institute of Science.— File Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy
Instead of providing parking spaces in big places, we should identify smaller places to do so, says T.G. Sitharam of the Indian Institute of Science.— File Photo: V. Sreenivasa Murthy

There should be no free parking in the city, according to T.G. Sitharam, chairperson of the Centre for Infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning (CiSTUP) of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.).

Speaking at the one-day workshop on “Urban Transport – Mobility Strategies for Bangalore” here on Tuesday, he said that as the number of vehicles in the city had gone up from 3.65 million in 2009 to 4.5 million in 2013, it becomes imperative that we should seriously do a rethink on providing parking spaces in the city. According to him, parking of vehicles should be banned on major roads. However, on some roads, it could be restricted to just one side. And, there should also be restriction on registration of vehicles. “If no parking provision has been made available at an individual’s house, he/she should not be allowed to register the third car,” he said.

While parking of vehicles should be totally banned in areas such as Majestic, which gets a lot of footfalls, in some other areas it should be restricted. And, instead of providing parking spaces in huge, big places, we should identify smaller places to create parking spaces on public-private partnership basis. That will make parking spaces easily accessible to the people.

Bhaskar Rao, president and chairperson of the Centre for Symbiosis of Technology, Environment and Management (STEM), stressed on the need for planning for “housing of vehicles.” He said that with on-road parking, the motorable space available on roads had naturally reduced. “Mobility planning should look at important micro issues such as how much space is available for use to park vehicles on the roads and footpaths,” he added.

It is pertinent to note that in September this year, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) council recorded the government’s decision to reintroduce pay-and-park system in the city, which was scrapped in 2005. Mayor B.S. Sathyanarayana had then maintained that the civic body would try to implement the system soon. The BBMP is yet to frame the rules and officials are yet to decide on the roads to be included in the three packages proposed by the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT).

The rates proposed by DULT too will be reduced as the BBMP does not want to burden the citizens, sources in the civic body said.