NEW DELHI: As the Supreme Court has set a deadline for the South Delhi Municipal Corporation to run a pilot project to ease the problem of parking, the civic body, along with the Resident Welfare Association of Lajpat Nagar 3, is working towards creating a model that can be followed in the rest of the city.
Similar pilot projects are on in two other areas, Kamla Nagar in north Delhi and Krishna Nagar in east Delhi. In Lajpat Nagar, the pilot project, as suggested by the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA), will run for three months.
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According to the RWA in Lajpat Nagar 3, there are around 3,900 cars in the locality. The members said the major issue they faced was visitors parking their cars in the locality, which is close to the Central Market.
“Weekends are a mess here. There is too much crowd and people don’t get parking space, so they enter the colony to park their cars. Also, many people park inside the colony to avoid paying parking fees,” RWA president Amarjeet Singh said.
One road passing through Lajpat Nagar 3 connects the Central Market to the Ring Road. The residents say the road is accident-prone as vehicles move on it at high speed.
“There are no speed breakers and every day there is at least one case of accident, at times even fatal. This has been raised with the SDMC. We got the papers for having speed bumps on the road and gave them to the MCD in February, but no action has been taken on the request so far,” Singh said.
Will they agree?
The EPCA has identified additional places for parking cars, including the premises of hospitals and educational institutions, which do not require their parking space after their working hours.
“The hospital is a place where there is 24-hour service. With ambulances and cars of patients, vehicle movement is always there. Therefore it is not advisable for residents to park their cars here,” said an official from Moolchand Hospital, in Lajpat Nagar 3.
The principal of Shaheed Hemu Kalani government school, BK Sharma, said, “The civic body needs to seek permission from the schools’ head authority. If the permission is granted, we will have to make arrangements.”
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SDMC’s move
The pilot project envisages a demand for parking of 3,510 cars in Lajpat Nagar 3, whereas the legal parking space can only accommodate 1,830 cars. This means space is needed for 1,680 more cars.
“Areas where cars are supposed to be parked and no parking zones have already been defined and maps have already been chalked out for study and understanding the place,” said PS Jha, Deputy Commissioner (Parking), SDMC.
Jha said that the civic body would assess the shortcomings of the pilot project and inform the SC about the problems.“Our target is to improve walkability and remove encroachments,” he noted.
The plan so far
As per the RWA, three places will be considered by SDMC for allocating parking spaces for the residents if the number of cars in the locality increases—Moolchand Hospital, the 3C theatre complex, and a parking lot being built on Feroze Gandhi Marg.
The residents will be given stickers by the RWA for their cars. There will be separate stickers for visitors’ cars. Any vehicle without a sticker found occupying a parking space for long will be taken away by the SDMC.