Despite being a planned sub-city, DDA has failed to provide enough parking space in market areas. This has forced visitors to park on side lanes and no-parking zones, leading to a parking nightmare and congestion.
Despite being a planned sub-city, Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has failed to provide enough parking space in market areas. Visitors are, therefore, often forced to park in service lanes and even in no parking zones of main roads.
The problem has been persisting for mixed land use (MLU) markets across the city.
Neelam Kaushik, a resident of Sector 6, said, “The pathetic condition of parking in markets makes me wonder how this is a planned city at all!”
Thousands of people visit the markets of Sectors 6,10,11,12,4,5 — all MLUs markets — and all face acute parking crisis.
Mukesh Singh of Sector 4 market said, “Our market has about 500 shops, but the parking space on the premises can barely accommodate 100 vehicles; that number goes up to 200-300 for bigger markets, like in Sector 6 and 10. This clearly shows that DDA had failed to foresee this space problem.”
In a market like Ramphal Chowk, there’s no space for parking. Visitors and shop owners park their vehicles on the roads, leaving no space for pedestrians. In fact, the situation is so bad that people from nearby sectors like 3,4,5,13,14,16,17,18,22 and 23 avoid going to this market.
Shalini Agrawal, who was recently fined because for wrong parking, complained, “You can’t understand where to park! From Sector 17, you have no option but to take your own car to get to this market, but where do we park? Authorities should seriously think about parking facilities for this market.”
Residents, out of compulsion, park the vehicles in no parking zone and their vehicles are often towed away by the police. On weekends, residents feel, some provisions must be made by traffic police to allow parking in one of the lanes of the road.
To provide temporary relief, an alternative parking was developed by DDA in 2010 in Sector 10, behind Shakuntlam Apartments. The space was made free and could be used by visitors to markets of Sector 6 and 10. But due to poor execution, the parking was never properly used.
A joint survey was also conducted in 2010 and 2012 by the DDA, in collaboration with the corporation and the police and RWAs of the area, to locate spaces for parking. But nothing happened in that direction after the survey.
Recently, in 2017, Mayor of South Delhi Municipal Corporation, Kamaljeet Sehrawat, visited the markets of Sector 6 and 10 with the team of engineers of municipal corporation and also the DDA. She asked them to find an answer to the parking issue, and also wrote to the DDA for space. However, the DDA denied giving any space for the development of parking slots in the area. Confirming the same, the mayor said to City Spidey, “The DDA has denied giving us any space to develop a parking area. We are developing parking in many areas across Delhi, and we wanted to do the same for Dwarka.”
