With the increasing density of vehicles and shrinking parking spaces in all major cities of Gujarat, the State Government has now decided to allocate 1% of land under all the town planning schemes henceforth.
This will be mandatory and the parking spaces will have to be created open to the sky.
Though the government has already made it mandatory to provide parking spaces in all buildings, whether residential or commercial, compliance is very low. As a result, all the cities and towns are facing parking problems. What worsens the situation is the increasing pace of urbanization in Gujarat. As much as 46% population of Gujarat now lives in major cities, towns and peri-urban areas.
The State Government has already issued a notification to implement this decision.
The government has identified 843 TP schemes and the majority of them are in Ahmedabad. Nearly 364 TP schemes in Ahmedabad, including in areas under the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and the Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (AUDA) have been completed. “We will see that buildings coming up in these schemes have adequate parking facility”, a senior official of the State Urban Development Department told Free Press Journal.
Going by the vehicle density and the number of vehicles, parking is a major issue that the cities are facing. The seriousness of the situation can be gauged by the fact that vehicle density has risen by 73.5% in Gujarat in the last two decades. The number of vehicles also touched more than 3.10 crore last year, which was 0.56 lakh in 2001. Surat city has the highest density of vehicles.
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