“It was agreed that all agencies engaged with the business of parking
such as MCD, DDA, NDMC and DMRC should have a common parking rate,” said
a senior government official. The proposal, which was discussed in the
meeting held on parking at the LG’s office last week, is expected to be
adopted soon.

The decision to have a common parking rate across
the city is only part of the draft parking policy that was discussed at
the meeting. “A number of decisions were agreed upon in the meeting,
which was attended not only by the LG and Delhi government officials but
also EPCA members. It was also decided that to discourage parking, the
rate of the second hour will be kept higher than the first,” added the
official. The idea, say officials, is to discourage surface parking
altogether. Ranjan Mukherjee, OSD to LG, said, “The only way it can be
achieved is by stopping the subsidy being provided to public parking at
present.”

The good news is that the meeting also saw the Delhi
government agree “in principle” not to convert green areas into parking
spaces. “Parking should not be constructed under public parks/greens and
the MPD2021 will be amended accordingly,” added the official. The
decision comes after a spate of projects being launched by the MCD
wherein parks were to be converted into parking lots or multi-level lots
were being planned on being built under the park.

The meeting
also gave the go-ahead to giving an impetus to multi-level parking.
“There will be a differential between rates for surface parking and
multi-level parking to incentivize the latter’s use,” says the minutes
of the meeting, which was held last week at the L-G’s office.
Incidentally, almost all multi-level parking projects that have been
undertaken in the city in the past few years have had dismal results.