After a high-level meeting presided over by Lt Governor Tejendra Khanna, a top official of Delhi Government said currently 11 per cent of total area in the city is being used for parking space and it was time to take some drastic steps to control number of vehicles.
"The government feels there is no other alternative but to make hefty increase in parking fee to restrict number of private vehicles. We cannot afford to increasing the parking space as currently 11 per cent of the total area is being used for parking," the official said.
In the meeting, a number of experts including from Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) spoke about the need for a hefty hike in surface parking as people are not using the multi-level parkings due to cost factor.
"We have built a number of multi-level parking. But they are not being used as rate of surface parking is much lower than the multi-level parking," said the official.
According to statistics, there are nearly 65 lakh vehicles registered in the city while the total number of vehicles in Delhi is more than the total number of vehicles in Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata. On an average over 1,000 vehicles are added to the city roads everyday.
The High Court appointed Special Task Force, in its report in February, had strongly recommended hiking the rates significantly.
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Levying of hefty road tax, introduction of congestion charge and putting high premium on parking were some of the measures the CSE had suggested to Delhi Government to check growth of private vehicles and overcome the traffic mess in the city.
In a letter to Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit last year, the CSE citing examples of various cities including London, Stockholm and Tokyo, said experience from across the world showed that parking controls, parking pricing along with taxes top the list as first generation car restraint measures.
The meeting also felt the need to further scale up public transport system.