top of page
Search

India’s Roadside Parking Conundrum


Why our footpaths have become free garages, what research tells us, and how other cities priced their way out of the mess


India adds roughly 20-22 million new motor vehicles every year, but the supply of legal, well-managed parking bays is growing only in the tens of thousands.¹ Unpriced, unmarked kerb space becomes the default “free garage”, eating up carriageway and sidewalks.



Why bother about “just” parking?

  • Every hour a lane is used for roadside (kerbside) parking instead of movement, capacity on a four-lane arterial falls by 20-30 % and average speed by a quarter. ResearchGate

  • Footpath spill-over forces pedestrians onto the carriageway, driving up crash risk—especially for children and the elderly. SpringerOpen

  • Free or flat-fee parking is an invisible subsidy. Only 8-12 % of urban Indian households own a car, yet 100 % pay the congestion, pollution and bus delays it causes.


On-road Parking and cramped Indian Cities
On-road Parking and cramped Indian Cities


Why do Indian cities still treat the road edge as a free car park?

Challenge

Ground reality & examples

Narrow streets

Over 70 % of urban road length is < 18 m ROW; a marked 2.3 m parking strip leaves < 5 m for two-way traffic—below the IRC (Indian Roads Congress) minimum. SpringerOpen

Fragmented oversight

Traffic Police issue challans, the civic body auctions fee collection, Maybe Smart-City SPVs install sensors—nobody controls the full chain.

Politics of “free”

Paid-parking pilots were rolled back in Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai after trader & RWAs protests. C40 CitiesThe Times of India

Weak contracts

Flat-rate tenders reward attendants for maxima­lising tickets, not turnover; off-street Multi Level City Parkings sit half empty while cars hog the road edge. Reinventing Parking

Missing price signals

92 % of kerbside bays in CBDs remain unpriced or under-priced. ITDP India



Do we actually have room for legal, free on-street parking?


A typical Indian local street: 18 m ROW 7 m carriageway | 1.8 m footpath | 2.3 m parked car | 7 m carriageway

Shift one footpath to parking and either:

  • the carriageway shrinks below two 3.25 m lanes or

  • the footpath drops below the 1.5 m accessibility norm.

Only boulevards ≥ 30 m (e.g., parts of Rajpath) can fit parking without stealing walking or bus space. Research from CRRI-monitored corridors in Delhi and Patna backs this geometry. TRID



Indian experiments—mixed report card

City

What was tried

What happened

Chennai

Area-Wide Parking Management System: sensor bays, UPI payments, demand-based tariffs (₹20-₹70/h). C40 Cities

Compliance up 16 %, footpath encroachment down 28 %, ₹14 cr annual revenue to CUMTA.

Pune

2018 Demand-Responsive Parking Policy. ITDP India

Still stuck in pilots on 5–6 roads after RWA protests and council delays. Pune MirrorPUNE PULSE - Trusted-Connected-Targeted

Delhi

2019 Parking Management Area Plans (PMAPs). Hindustan Times

Only 2 of 25 wards notified; multi-level garages open half-vacant while roads remain clogged.

Bhubaneswar

Smart-parking PPP at 14 hubs.

Illegal parking near Unit-I market fell 35 %; city considering scale-up.


Global playbook worth copying

Principle

Where it works

Transfer to India

Price for 85 % occupancy

SFpark, San Francisco—meter rates updated every 6-8 weeks. sfmta.com

Start with ₹20–₹80/h; auto-adjust via IoT sensors + UPI.

Proof-of-parking before car purchase

Tokyo’s Shako Shomeisho certificate since 1962. Reinventing Parking

Link car registration on VAHAN to a geo-tagged lease/ownership of an off-street bay.

Annual removal quota for street bays

Amsterdam scrubs 1,500 bays/year, reallocates space to cycle tracks & trees. Bloomberg

Cities can pledge a 10 % yearly “road-edge diet” in their ABD zones.

Single kerb authority

Seoul’s Parking Ordinance centralises pricing, enforcement and tech. ScienceDirect

Merge Traffic Police towing squad, municipal licence wing and ITS cell into one Kerb Management Authority.



Action plan


Short (0-2 yrs)

  1. Declare no-parking streets: any ROW < 18 m becomes zero-tolerance; tow & fine via e-challan.

  2. Tariff 101: ₹20/h for low-demand, ₹60/h near markets; revise quarterly to hit 80 % occupancy.

  3. Transparent enforcement: live tow-truck map; earmark 50 % of fines for footpath & bus-stop upgrades.


Medium (3-5 yrs)

  1. Proof-of-parking rule in state Motor-Vehicle rules tied to RTO registration.

  2. Kerb Management Authority with GIS map, contract oversight and tariff powers.

  3. Road-edge diet: convert at least one side of every pilot street into cycle track, delivery bay or parklet each year.

  4. Dynamic curb-use pilots: morning freight zones, evening resident parking, night-time EV chargers—all managed by app-based permits.



Bottom line

Roadside space is public land. Pricing and managing it—rather than giving it away—offers the quickest win for de-congesting our streets, funding better footpaths, and nudging trips to buses, Metro and cycles.


Glossary of Acronyms

  • IRC – Indian Roads Congress

  • CBD – Central Business District

  • RTO – Regional Transport Office

  • ROW – Right of Way

  • SPV – Special Purpose Vehicle (Smart-City project company)

  • CRRI – Central Road Research Institute

  • CUMTA – Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority

  • PMC – Pune Municipal Corporation

  • ULB – Urban Local Body

  • PCU – Passenger Car Unit (traffic flow measure)

  • BRT – Bus Rapid Transit

  • PMAP – Parking Management Area Plan

  • SFMTA – San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

  • ITS – Intelligent Transport System

  • ABD – Area-Based Development zone



Sources (News & Research)

  1. Prakash P. et al., “Study of Effect of On-Street Parking on Traffic Capacity,” Transportation Research, 2020. ResearchGate

  2. SpringerOpen, “How on-street parking regulations affect traffic delay,” 2023. SpringerOpen

  3. ITDP-India & CUMTA, “Chennai’s Comprehensive Parking Management System,” C40 case study, 2022. C40 Cities

  4. Pune Mirror, “Activists slam five-year delay in Pune Parking Policy,” 2025. Pune Mirror

  5. Hindustan Times, “MCD’s parking plan parked for 3 years,” Delhi, 2024. The Times of India

  6. SFMTA, “SFpark Pilot Project Evaluation Summary,” 2014. sfmta.com

  7. ReinventingParking.org, “Japan’s Proof-of-Parking Rule,” 2014. Reinventing Parking

  8. Bloomberg CityLab, “Amsterdam’s Plan to Eliminate 11,000 Parking Spots,” 2019. Bloomberg

  9. Hindustan Times (Bhubaneswar Bureau), “Smart parking cuts illegal parking near Unit-I by 35 %,” 2024.

  10. ReinventingParking.org interview with Shreya Gadepalli, “Taming India’s On-Street Parking,” 2018. Reinventing Parking

  11. Indian Express, “PMC to implement pay-and-park on select roads,” 2022. The Indian Express

  12. MoRTH, Road Transport Yearbook 2023-24 (vehicle fleet statistics).

 
 
 
bottom of page