AHMEDABAD: In 2020, despite the Covid pandemic curfew, the city traffic police department had towed and fined some 3.35 lakh illegally parked vehicles from various locations in the city.
In 2019, some 2.26 lakh vehicles were towed and in 2018, over 14.5K vehicles were towed for illegal parking.
But here is the catch, against the rising demand for parking in the city, the municipal administration has been able to generate legal parking lots for 32K vehicles, which includes 5.4K four-wheelers and 26.5K two-wheelers. Ahmedabad presently has 74 authorized parking sites. Of these, 40 are off-street parking, four are multi-level parking facilities, nine are on-street parking and the remaining 21 are below flyovers.
“When Gujarat state was formed in 1961, there were only 43K vehicles registered in Ahmedabad. This figure has now risen to over 35 lakh vehicles, which is 80 folds in five decades. In these five decades, just 18% of Ahmedabad’s land was made available for public purpose,” says a senior Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) official in the estate department. Ahmedabad city had a total number of 0.25 million motor vehicles registered in 2018-19. This went up to 3.5 million, recording an annual growth rate of 6%. Of this, 73% is of two-wheelers.
But what makes earmarking legal parking space in the city more challenging is the fact is that Ahmedabad has a more dispersed economic activities in relation to its citizens residential clusters.
“Ahmedabad is a polycentric. The main industrial areas Vatva, Narol, Naroda, Odhav and Kathwada are located towards the east of the city, while commercial activities are centred around Ashram Road, CG Road and Sarkhej.
Apart from this, commercial developments are allowed on all roads having width of 18 metres and above which encourages a mix development pattern and dispersed trips,” adds the AMC official.