News: GMDA to start on-street paid parking to resolve woes of commuters in Gurugram-11-03-2022
The Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) is planning to provide on-street paid parking to office goers on a pilot basis till multi-level parking facilities are constructed in the city to ease traffic congestion and resolve parking woes of daily commuters, said officials on Friday
The authority has identified 17 spots for on-street parking and two sites for off-street parking.
“We have planned to start a pilot project for on-street and off-street parking near offices in Sector 44. Under this system, people can park their cars, which will be managed by a parking contractor. Currently, people park their cars on roads, which oftens leads to traffic snarls. This initiative will help solve this problem,” said a senior official from the Smart City division of GMDA.
Officials said a detailed plan for the parking system is being chalked out and they are yet to take a call on when the project will be rolled out.
Roads with good width have been selected for on-street parking. The cars will primarily be parked on the left side of the road depending on its width, said officials.
“If the road is 18m wide, then only one parking lane can be made. However, if the width of the road is 24m or more, parking lanes can be chalked out on both sides of the road. Our long term goal is to discipline people and ensure they don’t park their vehicles anywhere on the road. The fee to be charged for parking vehicles on these on-site street parking zones will be more than what is charged in other parking lots so that people are discouraged to use motorized transport and move towards non-motorised transport,” said the official.
While drafting the comprehensive mobility and management plan for Gurugram in 2019, the GMDA found that only about 20% of the city’s roads have streetlights, with encroachments and unauthorized parking reducing the carrying capacity of roads — about 32% of which are two-lane carriageways — making them prone to traffic congestion. The authority had then decided to take steps to reduce on-road parking and focus on systematic parking in the city and non-motorised transport.
Officials further said construction of three parking lots on land owned by Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) at Sohna Chowk, Kaman Sarai and Sadar Bazaar is underway and is likely to be completed by this year. A fourth parking lot will be constructed near Dak Khana, but the Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran is yet to hand over the land for the project to the MCG.
Currently, in a city of more than two million residents, there are only 15 sanctioned parking lots by Haryana Shahari Vikas Pradhikaran, and a multilevel parking facility in Sector 29. Therefore, parking remains a major crisis in the city.
Many residents opt to use the main carriageway or service lanes near markets, malls, and eateries to park their vehicles, which often results in traffic snarls especially in areas such as MG Road, Galleria Market, Sohna Road, and Golf Course Road.
