On Friday, Lieutenant Governor (LG) VK Saxena reviewed the traffic situation in the city and asked senior officials of the city traffic police, transport department, Delhi Municipal Corporation (MCD) and New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) to jointly develop a mobile application through which citizens can report cases of illegal parking and issue fines.
The new app will allow people to upload pictures of illegally parked vehicles from their mobile phones so that action can be taken in real time, an official from the LG office said. Under a pilot project, gardeners in NDMC areas will be the first to be empowered to take pictures of illegally parked vehicles and upload them on the app for action to be taken, the officials said.
The above officials added that the NDMC will look for ways to motivate the gardeners for this work.
The decision was taken after LG chaired the third fortnightly coordination meeting on transport, initiated by him, on Friday.
“It was observed that the designated multi-storey parking areas were not being used to their full capacity, resulting in overflow on roads and streets. To address this issue, the traffic police have been directed to carry out a drive aimed at ensuring that vehicles are parked at designated multi-storey parking areas. For this purpose, the multi-storey parking areas at Kamla Nagar and Yusuf Sarai Market will be used immediately as a pilot project,” the LG office official said.
Officials added that parking in designated multi-storey parking lots would be encouraged through discounts, for which the city administration would draw up a plan. Up to now, parking in parking lots has been done perpendicularly, but this should be changed, the LG ordered.
“As per the proposals, diagonal parking will be ensured in street parking spaces to minimise bottlenecks and vehicles will also be parked and taken out of parking spaces instead of the usual perpendicular parking,” officials said.
The LG has also directed that significant discounts on parking fees be given to electric vehicles. This will not only encourage the adoption of electric vehicles as a preferred choice but will also go a long way in reducing pollution caused by vehicle exhaust, the officials added.
The LG also instructed the traffic police to enforce the use of the designated bus lanes on the left side of the road for all heavy vehicles. The police were also asked to coordinate with the traffic department to start scrapping the old police vehicles that are no longer in use and are parked in various courtyards in the city as soon as possible.
