Urban India’s Parking Woes: An Overview
This article is authored by Ramanath Jha, ORF.
Vehicular congestion and insufficient parking facilities are significant emerging challenges for India’s mega and metropolitan cities, severely impairing mobility. Although curtailed by constitutional mandates, many Indian cities are seeking to resolve the issue through parking policies, focusing on regulations, pricing as a management tool, new technologies, and off-street parking provisions. This brief assesses the parking policies of Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Delhi, Pune, and Mumbai, and discusses the likely obstacles and potential solutions to alleviate the situation.
India’s urbanisation is shaped by its overwhelming dependence on its metropolitan cities, home to 42.3% of its urban population. This has resulted in high human density in over one million cities, averaging 20,713 persons per sq km. As urban populations grow and city economies expand, there has been a rise in the number of motor vehicles, primarily cars and two-wheelers, in urban areas. For instance, in 2020, Delhi had 11.89 million registered motor vehicles, Bengaluru had 9.64 million, Chennai had 6.35 million, Ahmedabad had 4.57 million, Mumbai had 3.88 million, Hyderabad had 3.24 million, and Jaipur had 3.17 million.
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This article is authored by Ramanath Jha, ORF.
