Gobar Times Magazine (Environment for Kids Monthly) - Centre for Science and Environment

Gobar times: Environment for Beginners

C O V E R S T O R Y

CARRUSHHH!

Parking Perks

Consider this. Out of 8760 hours in a year the total driving time of an average car is 400 hours. For about 90 to 95 per cent of the time a car is parked either in residence or in office.

Parking is one of the most wasteful uses of cars

If demand for land for an average car is measured on the basis of the average size of the car and one parking space per car, the total cars already occupy 10.8 per cent city’s urbanised area. Now consider this: Delhi’s forest cover is 11.5 per cent of the geographical area of the National Capital Territory of Delhi!

Cars: living in luxury
A car is allotted 23 sq m for parking. And the government allots 18 sq m plots to 32 sq km plots for low cost housing schemes for the slum dwellers!

The car owning minority is using up more and more road space and urban space.		NO PARKING ANY TIME Around the world, cities have capped parking supply. Shows significant impact. PORTLAND, Oregon set an overall cap of 40,000 parking spaces downtown. This increased public transport usage from 20-25 per cent in the 1970s to 48 per cent in mid 1990s. NEW YORK'S very high parking fees and limited parking supply have lowered car ownership far below the average rates in other US cities. BOSTON has frozen parking requirements at 10 per cent higher than the 1973 levels. This has helped Boston to meet the federal clean air standards. Bogota has removed limit on the fees that private parking companies can charge. The additional revenue is dedicated to road maintenance and public transit service improvement.

Land is limited. Where will Delhi or any other city in India find more land to park cars?

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