What is required is to formulate a policy giving out very short-term measures, be it hard and difficult, but to be implemented urgently and with utmost impunity
Union Minister for Urban Development, Venkaiah Naidu's concern for ever-increasing traffic congestion in Delhi is understandable. Not only the main roads but even the colony roads are becoming non-negotiable. Traffic jams at almost all hours of the day are a common sight. According to an estimate, Delhi has over 65 lakh vehicles, that is more than the combined vehicles in Mumbai, Calcutta and Chennai. Not only that, a total of 1,000 is added every day. The situation is catastrophic.
The Minister and his office staff are busy drafting a blueprint of probable measures to unclog Delhi traffic woes. Some of their important suggestions include improving the public transport system by increasing the number of buses, autos, metro links, etc. In addition, there is the widening of roads, more flyovers for signal-free corridors and multi-level parking lots with a steep hike in parking rates with the intention of discouraging private vehicles.
It would be relevant here to draw the attention of policymakers regarding the pathetic state of most of the Government-built parking lots. To one’s utter dismay, a majority of them are not functional. When you compare them with the ones that are privately built, like in shopping malls, there is a world of difference. While the the latter are working successfully, unfortunately, Government-owned are not. Take, for example, the parking lot in Hauz Khas in Delhi, which started about a decade back, with the cost escalating many-fold and fake dramatic inaugurations. It still remains non-functional. Motorists complain of defective design, as large bodied cars are not manoeuvreable at turns. In addition, there is no fire-fighting system in place and no lights. The result, therefore, is that Hauz Khas market has now become terribly congested and accident-prone. The Government should fix the responsibility on the people who have wasted so much money on many such structures, without any result.
Many multi-level parking projects have been announced by the Minister, but it would be prudent to first evaluate the condition of the present non-functional parking lots and what ails them, get a world-class tried and tested design first and then start building them in a fixed time-frame.
However, all these measures to de-congest Delhi appear long-term and fail to address the impending menace in the near future. What is required is to formulate a policy giving out very short-term and stiff measures, and to be implemented them urgently and with utmost impunity.
The Government should check the prevalent tendency of Delhiites' insatiable love for owning a number of private cars. For the rich and the elite, purchase of the newest, priciest models of vehicles has become a status symbol. Three to four cars per family is common in upper-class Delhi. Buildings with stilt parking often cannot accommodate all the cars the residents own. The result is that cars are seen parked outside on the roads.
For attaining this, I suggest two measures. One, levy a heavy tax on the pruchase of a second car in the name of the same person or on the same address, and a still heftier tax on the purchase of a third car, and so on. This policy has been implemented successfully in Singapore, and no one is complaining.
Second, one should not become an automatic custodian of the public place in front of one’s residence. We see many ‘no parking' boards in front of personal properties, lying on the roadside, which is technically illegal, as the road belongs to the State and, therefore, should not be used as a personal parking place. The above mentioned laws would discourage people from buying unnecessary personal vehicles, and check the spiralling number of private cars being added every day.