Parking fine in Pune to be Rs 20,000 ?

Pune- NP NEWS NETWORK- A massive hike in fine is on cars for parking the vehicles illegally on the roads. The Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has given a proposal to the traffic police for a joint action. The fine can go as high as Rs 20,000 for parking the car in no parking zones.

Parking is an essential component of the transportation system. A typical vehicle runs for one hour on an average and is parked for 23 hours in a day. It is also important to consider that a typical vehicle usually needs three different parking spaces-one at the owner’s residence, second at owner’s office/business place and third at recreational/entertainment facilities.

The rising numbers of vehicles in Pune city are likely to lead to 4.5 lakhs parking spaces every year, and that is simply preposterous to supply. Parking facilities are a major cost to society. As the numbers of vehicles in the city explode, parking becomes a public nuisance, swallowing all available spaces meant for other road users as well as creating a demand for all available open spaces to be turned into parking lots. The mindset that ‘provision of parking is a right’ must be changed. Creation of parking space and land required for that is extremely valuable and no resident has the right to its free use.

Traffic management and parking policy are closely interlinked and should serve a wider set of environmental, social and economic objectives. The city needs to give high priority to parking control initiatives, which encourage a shift from the use of personal modes of travel, especially the 2-wheeler and cars, to public transport, walking or cycling; and to traffic management programmes, which reduce accidents, congestion, pollution and dependency on personal modes of transportation.

Rather than having a reactive parking policy, one that constantly changes with the ever-increasing numbers of vehicles, the policy itself needs to ensure a reduction in the need for parking and support more strategic planning objectives.