Odisha unveils Urban Parking Policy

Parking hassles are not uncommon in metro cities of India where a large number of cars are towed away every day for parking violations. Sometimes people living near shopping malls and popular market centres can’t even move their own car out of their own parking place.

Odisha has now come out with an urban parking policy that is expected to streamline parking and prevent hassles to consumers. Salient features are summarised below-

Provision of parking space within 500 mtrs. distance or 10 minuteswalk from or to the destination for 75% of urban citizen.	Promotion of Non-Motorized Transportation (NMT) and mass transportsystem	Integration of parking facilities with public amenities and publictransportation system.	Mobilise resources for a dedicated urban transport fund at state and city	All parking spaces must provide adequate facility for persons with disability, children and elderly people.No additional or differential charges are to be allowed for such special provision in the parking space.
Provisions of parking to be made near Retail Commercial/Shopping with publicconveniences should be mostly short duration for visitors and long duration for the owners/workers of the commercial establishments .These parking facilities are to be provided by the owners of the establishments.	In cities with severe congestion submission of Certificate of availability of parkingprovision for the vehicles purchased and proposed for their registration could be made mandatory.	Provisions for parking with standards are to be made in Building Regulationsfor towns/cities for different uses including residential building constructed or plots housing area more than150 sq.mtr.	Certain areas of the city may be declared as no vehicle zone either fully or partiallyon certain	Promote Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and incentivize active privatesector participation in achieving the objective.

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