Parking across city to your pinch your pocket

Thane: Parking in Thane is likely to get more expensive, as the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC) is formulating levying steep charges for parking private vehicles on public roads across the city. Where cars owners will have to pay Rs 50, bikers will have to shell out Rs 20 for two-hour parking slots in various parts of the city. A presentation is likely to be made before the civic chief Sanjeev Jaiswal on Thursday following which the same could be implemented in the next two months.
The team deployed to implement the parking policy in Thane has divided road parking zones in four different categories (see box for details).
The civic body plans to levy a premium on areas adjoining our parking bays that will come up at various parts of the city, said an official working on the concept. The idea would be to discourage parking on roads so that motorists avail of the plazas instead of clogging the streets.
Civic officials said that they were presently analyzing these rates and would present them before the civic commissioner on Thursday. “Apart from the set tariffs, we are working out rates of monthly passes and another tariff for overnight parking of autos,” said a senior official from the civic commissioner’s team.
Parking has become a major issue in Thane with many private and public transport vehicles blatantly being parked on roads in the absence of adequate parking bays. This greatly inconveniences pedestrians and traffic flow that gets little space to move and has to slow down. TOI recently highlighted how daily commute has slowed down by nearly 50% in last four years.
Experts say it is high time such policies are implemented on city roads that are already reeling under tremendous vehicle numbers. “Thane has a mismatch of number of vehicles and available parking spots and so we need stern measures to curb rampant berthing of cars and bikes in public areas,” said urban planning expert Sulakshana Mahajan.