Hard on violations: The civic body will collect four times the parking charges as fine. more-in The level of traffic congestion in a neighbourhood will soon determine the parking charges along its roads. The Chennai Corporation will hike parking charges in several areas in the city next month to ease congestion. The civic body has started a study to identify stretches with traffic congestion to increase parking charges in designated parking slots. “The idea is to make people walk in congested areas by increasing parking charges that act as a disincentive to take the vehicle to the area. But we will also ensure that people are not subjected to any hardship because of the decision,” said an official. The civic body will collect four times the parking charges as fine for violating rules framed in accordance with the Chennai City Municipal Corporation Act. For example, if a motorist parks his vehicle for four hours in a congested stretch, which has a parking charge of ?40 per hour, and fails to pay the charge he will get a notice at his address for ?160 as fine amount. CCTV cameras and automatic number plate recognition system will trace vehicles that violate rules and send information to the Corporation. The Corporation will start collecting the fine amount from motorists from next month after the completion of the study. Currently, the civic body does not collect fine from motorists who fail to pay parking charges. The existing charges are ?5 per hour for cars. Motorcycles and autorickshaws are exempt from parking charges. But the new system will collect parking charges for motorcycles and autorickshaws also. Study under way Officials said a work order to commission a pan-city parking management system has already been issued under public private partnership mode. “A study on stretches with traffic congestion will be completed next month. The number of stretches to have higher parking charges will be finalised based on the study,” said the official. According to preliminary estimates, at least 3000 parking slots in congested areas such as T.Nagar are expected to have higher charges. More than 50% of the 471 bus routes of the Corporation have reported traffic congestion as per data of the Traffic Police. “The final decision will be made after completion of the study next month,” the official said.

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