Parking Management in Urban Areas: A Case Study of Vadodara City

Abstract

The Indian cities are developing and spreading rapidly. The parking issue has become a major planning problem in urban areas of major cities because of rapid economical and vehicle population growth. It is stated that population growth and increasing living standards of people are responsible for the rise
in the city’s vehicular population. Affordable prices and subsidized parking fees are leading people to refer private vehicle over public transit as their travel mode. This study is carried out to investigate parking characteristics and to find the gap between parking guidelines and implementation. For the study, three different routes were identified which were critical in terms of parking facility. All the three routes were different in terms of land use, to study how the change in land use changes the parking behavior. For the survey, License plate method was opted, and survey was carried out during weekdays and weekends at peak hours. On-street and off-street parking characteristics were analyzed considering
the parking statistics which includes parking accumulation, parking occupancy, parking load, average parking duration, parking index/parking efficiency. With the change in land use, all the parking statistics were also changing. During the study, it was observed that some areas, even having sufficient parking capacity suffered from congestion due to improper management and lack of availability of
required signs, marking of bays and other smart techniques. Lack of coordination between different agencies was observed which led to poor implementation of the set policies and guidelines. Apart from these change in the land use, poorly maintained parking spaces, encroachment on the parking spaces were the major issues observed. Observing the study outcomes, some guidelines have been suggested for optimal utilization of available space. Formation of “parking management cell” under the purview of Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC) will be helpful in bringing the coordination and organize structure for the successful implementation. Also, formulation of parking area management plan (PAMP) was done with demarcation of all type of parking facilities.