Get ready to cough up more if you own more than one car

As the city is facing crisis of parking space and pollution, the Delhi government is considering a proposal to levy additional tax on those who want to own more than one car besides imposing congestion charges on busy roads and premium parking charges.

“Awareness is a crucial part and we are not in favour of imposing rules on the public but only awareness will not be sufficient. We will have to enforce to achieve the target of making Delhi the ‘environmental Capital of Asia,” said Gopal Rai, Delhi’s Transport Minister on Thursday. “The number of vehicles are increasing in the city so is the pollution. We will take all the measures to make Delhi a better place,” he added. 

The recommendation to impose congestion charges and premium parking was first mooted by the Supreme Court appointed Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) headed by Bhure Lal which could not be implemented even after the committee fixed April 2012 as the deadline to MCD to implement it.

“We are of the view that these schemes cannot be implemented without public cooperation so our first aim is to create awareness among the public about the ill effects of pollution on their health and future generations,” emphasised Rai. 

The minister, along with senior officers of the transport department, had recently visited Stockholm, Sweden, the environmental Capital of Europe, to learn the transport management in the city and emphasised the implementation of the model in Delhi. 

“They achieved the target by working on three fronts — awareness, penalty and facility,” he added. 

The minister also enumerated that some success stories of Stockholm which can be implemented in Delhi are bio-gas run buses, no honking, lane driving, hi-tech monitoring of traffic and traffic rules violations. The minister also informed that the transport department will soon start process to get Cabinet approval for running 1,000 buses on Public Private Partnership model while the process to induct 1,000 cluster buses have been started to ease public transport in the city.