Reforms in Panaji’s Pay and Park Policy

Article written for Our Parking Magazine (Dec 2022)

Reforms in Panaji’s Pay and Park Policy

Author: Amar Kulkarni and Tahir Noronha

Goa has the highest per-capita car ownership among all states of India.[1] The state’s AMRUT plan indicates that the current public transport modal share in the city is just 2%. This means that 98% of Panaji’s residents prefer using other modes of transport such as personal four and two-wheelers.[2] Table 1 compares vehicle ownership details of Panaji with two comparable cities, Panvel in Maharashtra and Karwar in Karnataka. Both cities have similar median income and are roughly the same size as Panaji. Further, all these three cities have a significant share of the population which are Konkani speaking. Yet, despite the socio-economic similarities, residents of Panaji have so many more vehicles than residents of the other two cities.

PHOTO: Aerial image of congestion in Panaji, Source: Amar Kulkarni

Table 1:  Vehicle ownership by household: Panaji vs comparable cities
	Panaji	Panvel	Karwar
Own a 2-wheeler	60.4%	47.3%	37.9%
Own a 4-wheeler	45.6%	19.4%	7.5%
Population	70,991	180,020	77,139
Households	24,093	39,024	19,820
Note: Across all three cities, houses which were deemed “vacant” by census officers were not surveyed. Source: Census 2011

Panaji’s problem with cars

The city of Panaji is already well beyond its carrying capacity. Panaji was planned in 1774. The carrying capacity of the city streets was designed for a (floating + resident) population of around 15,000. The primary mode of commute was by foot and by boat (very few would have horse / bullock cart). Panaji now has a resident population of at least 40,000 with an estimated 60,000 - 70,000 additional shifting population daily.[3] The floating population consists of people who come for jobs and to carry out other commercial, institutional and economic activities. These activities form a layer of interdependent economic activities. For example, the presence of tourists, commercial activities, government departments and services in the capital benefit local grocery stores, restaurants and related small-scale businesses. They bring a significant volume of pedestrian and vehicular traffic into the narrow lanes of the core city. This poses a pivotal challenge to the city in terms of accommodating these vehicles on the road and in parking areas. It results in traffic congestion, extended travel times and degradation of air quality. Table 2 illustrates how the number of vehicles has been steadily increasing; it is interesting to note that one of the fastest growing modes is the rental 2-wheeler sector. It is possible that the unavailability of parking and lack of public transport in touristic areas has directed visitors to opt for this mode of transport.

Table 2:  Cumulative Vehicle Registrations by Year For the entire state of Goa.
	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020
Private 2-Wheeler	690,326	743,037	796,495	856,229	906,438	944,125	1,017,052
Private 4-Wheeler	199,647	216,414	232,767	253,757	271,171	283,40	308,182
Freight 4 / 6-Wheeler	57,761	59,292	60,883	62,676	64,617	66,396	68,597
Taxi / Rental 2-Wheeler	21,851	23,539	25,327	26,893	28,879	31,388	33,490
Taxi 4-Wheeler	16,549	17,616	18,429	19,814	22,838	25,807	27,279
Bus All buses	11,085	11,384	11,503	11,806	12,014	12,256	12,657
Taxi / Freight 3-Wheeler	4,084	4,186	4,304	4,374	4,452	4,555	4,683
Note: Granular Data for Panaji was not available; but it is estimated that 80% of vehicles registered in the Panaji RTO; move around Panaji city.     Source: Department of Transport, Government of Goa (2021)

This issue is exacerbated by the lack of on-site parking in most of the buildings in this historic city. Amendments to the building construction regulations[4] have now enforced limited on-site parking for city buildings. However, in the last decade, there has been negligible construction

of new structures within city limits.

Congestion and parking policy in Panaji

Congestion has become a major issue to residents of Panaji, successive strategic, investment and development plans have prioritized the issue over the last decade and a half. The development plan of 2005[5] put in a proposal for reclamation of the Manshem wetlands to develop a business hub called Patto. One of the key factors in the Patto plan was that

additional parking and bus connectivity will be developed, to support commuters who frequent Panaji. The State Government’s “Imagine Panaji” masterplan[6] (2011) and Charles Correa Foundation’s “Decongestion Model for Panaji City Core”[7] (2014) respectively put the combating of congestion front and center of the plan. More recently, the Imagine Panaji Smart City Corporation paid UMTC a sum of ₹28 million to prepare a comprehensive mobility and a parking masterplan for the city.[8]

All plans did not get implemented – but the CCF plan pushed the Corporation of the City of Panaji (CCP) to prepare approximations for pay parking. The CCP approximation estimated that annual expenses would be ₹ 360 million, while projected revenue from parking fees would be at least ₹ 450 million.[9] Thus, in 2014 CCP released a tender calling for a suitable contractor to take up the work at a fee of ₹ 9 million per month. Several bids were received. All of them were less than one-third of the estimated fee.[10] The tender was withdrawn and re-issued in 2019. At that time a bid of ₹ 4.5 million was accepted from a private contractor.

PHOTO: Parking on the sidewalk, February 2020, source: Amar Kulkarni

Hurdles to enforce parking policy

Until the introduction of affordable cars in 1990, it was never assumed that so many people would own private vehicles. Today every lane of the core city, including corners, are perpetually occupied by cars. There is negligible space for any other activity. Every other activity becomes like an obstacle to vehicular movement, particularly private cars. Despite a notification issued by the District Magistrate, North Goa to enforce no-parking on designated corners in Panaji.[11] There has been no action taken against offenders (Photo 2, cars parked on corners November 2022). The enforcement of traffic regulations has been relatively weak in the city. The traffic cell of Panaji police has a staff of just 59 officers, with a jurisdiction of 193 sq kilometers. As of November 2022, there are 650 policemen who handle a minimum of 1.54 million vehicles in the state: a ratio of 2,300 cars for every officer in the traffic cell.[12] Panaji is also a city of events and festivals, at the time of writing traffic police are occupied with management of the International Film Festival of India, city officials complain of limited personnel to deal with traffic violations in the city.[13]

PHOTO 3 and 4: Parking on corners; source Amar Kulkarni

Further, till date the city of Panaji has no count of the number of parking slots in its jurisdiction. There is speculation that the slots were undercounted while preparing approximations. Vehicle sample surveys conducted by ICLEI and CCF indicate that there are approximately five times as many cars entering the core city as the number of available parking slots noted in the CCP approximations. Double parking and parking in no-parking zones are common sights in the city. If Panaji is to make concrete efforts towards a progressive parking policy, the following recommendations can be examined.

Conclusion

Solutions to parking reform

Transportation and connected parking issues need to be understood as issues of accessibility and not mobility. Mobility is a derived demand of the need to access destinations.[14] This is particularly true in Indian cities, where case studies have already indicated that increasing the width of carriageways leads to increased commutes by private vehicles. There are also major environmental and social costs of congestion that must be considered when planning in the public interest.[15]

The goal of a progressive policy in Panaji – considering the restrictions imposed by its very limited carrying capacity – must be comprehensive. Transport planning must be integrated into land-use plans. Further, the objective of transport plans must focus on combating congestion, not easing mobility.

Data Collection:

The first step the CCP needs to take is a simple act of data collection; The city gravely lacks urban information. For example, the 2018 Parking Master Plan prepared by UMTC missed the task of enumerating existing parking slots.[16] The last vehicular mode surveys for Panaji were carried out in 2013 as a part of the CCF plan. Without recent data, it is impossible to accurately plan for efficient transportation in Panaji.

Congestion Pricing:

One of the ways to look at the issue of congestion is to charge a fee to users who prefer private modes of transport, which leads to more trips and congestion. Places like Singapore and London have successfully implemented congestion pricing mechanisms for several decades years ago. Singapore introduced congestion charges in 1975 through Area Licensing Scheme and London introduced them in 2003. Along with the introduction of congestion pricing, on the same day, London introduced 300 extra buses into the central London bus network to boost the alternate mode of transport. In London, vehicles have to pay a congestion charge of 15 pounds on a daily basis to enter the 21sqm congestion zone between 7am to 6 p.m. from Mon - Fri and 12.00 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Weekends. As a result, the congestion zone experienced 39% fewer private cars between 2002 to 2014. The price has increased from 5 pounds to 15 pounds from 2003 till today.[17]

Implementation of Congestion Pricing in Panaji

Theoretically this policy should be easy to implement in Panaji at the six entry points. However, significant political will is required to push this through, which has not yet materialized. Within the congestion policy, a best practice can be picked up, to meet holistic goals, these are: 

●      Gravitational Attraction: Surge pricing based on land use & time. This principle What are the draw factors in Panaji. Flat fee of ₹20/- not working.

●      Progressivity of Finance: Where does the money collected go to? It has to be a cess – invest revenue into Non-Motorized Transport. Giving to contractors – revenue not reinvested in CCP.

Surge Pricing in Parking

Surge pricing or dynamic pricing mechanism charges parking fees based on the parking demand which changes as per land use and time of the day. The concept generally focuses on rising parking charges in the peak hours and reduced in the non- peak hours to justify the land value, to reduce congestion and discourage long term car parking. In the current scenario, CCP charges Rs. 20 throughout the day which doesn't really segregate peak (high demand) and non-peak hours (Low demand). These parking fees are on a lower end and not showing any substantial effect on reducing the congestion as car users don't hesitate to pay and park throughout the day. In addition, Panaji experiences double parking on almost all the primary and secondary roads which obstructs the flow of traffic and associated activities. So the parking demand in Panaji is extremely high and on the contrary the capacity is extremely limited which results in the traffic overflow and congestion. To improve the situation, it is important to focus on the mechanisms and tools which can help to decongest the traffic in Panaji. In order to decongest the city, it is critical to reduce the number of on street vehicles and discourage vehicle users from parking in the congested areas. To achieve the desired results, the city can experiment the concept of Surge Pricing on specific streets which can be treated as a pilot project to understand the challenges. The pilot project can help anticipate the challenges while scaling the concept at the city level or a ward level.

Municipalization of Traffic Management: Soon after the recent United States midterm elections the city of Philadelphia made headlines by deciding to replace some police officers with civilians to handle issues of traffic enforcement.[18] Activists in the city of Washington DC recently held a public meeting to advocate for similar reforms along the lines of Germany's Ordnungsamt. The Ordnungsamt are an unarmed police force to keep social order in place.  There is a statutory provision for Panaji to Municipalize traffic functions under the Corporation. As per the CCP Act 2002, the city is empowered to draft bye-laws to organize “Street traffic— street traffic and the reduction of noise caused by such traffic.”[19] The Goa Motor Vehicles Act may need to be amended to allow this, but it should not pose too much of a hurdle.

Final Thoughts

Because of the complex networks of actors, politics and tourism aspirations in the city. Panaji’s transport issue is a “wicked problem”[20] and it requires a radical solution to make change. Pilot projects and trial-and-error risk postponing action and reduce public support for long-term solutions. The city needs to act now; integrate transport into land-use and make the risky steps today, before it is too late.

BIBILIOGRAPHY

       Anna Orso "Philadelphia can replace some police officers with civilians, arbitration panel 

rules" The Philadelphia Inquirer November 15, 2022. Accessed November 27, 2022.    https://www.inquirer.com/politics/philadelphia/philadelphia-can-replace-police-with-civilians-20221115.html

Badstuber, Nicole. “London Congestion Charge: What Worked, What Didn’t, What Next.” News. The Conversation, April 11, 2019. https://theconversation.com/london-congestion-charge-what-worked-what-didnt-what-next-92478.

———. “London’s Congestion Charge Is Showing Its Age.” Bloomberg, April 11, 2018, sec. CItyLab Perspective. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-11/london-s-congestion-charge-is-showing-its-age.

Times of India. “CCP’s Pay-Parking Tender Comes a Cropper Again.” September 17, 2015. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/ccps-pay-parking-tender-comes-a-cropper-again/articleshow/48992561.cms.

FARHAD MANJOO. “We’ve Got to Stop Requiring Parking Everywhere.” The New York Times, June 2, 2022.

Cornell University Press. “From Mobility to Accessibility by Jonathan Levine, Joe Grengs and Louis A. Merlin | Paperback,” n.d. https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501716089/from-mobility-to-accessibility/.

Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. “How Singapore Improved Traffic with Congestion Pricing.” Government, September 21, 2021. https://www.cmap.illinois.gov/updates/all/-/asset_publisher/UIMfSLnFfMB6/content/singapore-congestion-pricing.

Lenora Chu. “Defund the Police? Europeans Redirect Them.” The Christian Science Monitor, July 6, 2020. https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2020/0706/Defund-the-police-Europeans-redirect-them.

US Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration. “Lessons Learned From International Experience in Congestion Pricing.” Government. Accessed December 15, 2022. https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/fhwahop08047/02summ.htm.

Mann, Adam. “What’s Up With That: Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse.” WIRED, June 17, 2014. https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/.

Matters, Transport for London | Every Journey. “Congestion Charge (Official).” Transport for London, n.d. https://www.tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge.

“Officla Gazette.” Government of Goa, January 22, 2009. http://goaprintingpress.gov.in/downloads/0809/0809-43-SIII-OG.pdf.

       Rittel, Horst W. J., and Melvin M. Webber. “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning.”

               Policy Sciences 4, no. 2 (June 1, 1973): 155–69. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730.

Team Herald. “Acute Staff Crunch Hits Goa Traffic Police.” News. oHeraldo, November 6, 2022. https://www.heraldgoa.in/Goa/Acute-staff-crunch-hits-Goa-Traffic-Police-/196279.

“The Goa (Regulation of Land Development and Building Construction) Act, 2008 (Goa Act 6 of 2008) and The Goa Land Development and Building Construction Regulations, 2010 (Incorporating Amendments Upto September, 2018).” Goa: Government of Goa, n.d. https://www.goa.gov.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Gldbcr-2010-original-Amm-2018-Sept-with-Appeal-Fee.pdf.

UMTC "Parking Master Plan for Panaji City" Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Corporation"

Watson, Peter L., and Edward P. Holland. “Congestion Pricing: The Example of Singapore,” n.d. https://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr181/sr181-008.pdf.

[1] Census of India 2011

[2] CCP Goa. “AMRUT Service Level Improvement Plan for Urban Transport in Goa” Imagine Panaji Smart City Corporation, January 2016.

[3] Census of India, 2011

[4] Goa Land Development and Building Construction Regulations (GLDBCR) Amendment of 2017.

[5] “Outline Development Plan for Panaji 2011” North Goa Planning and Development Authority, 2005

[6] Mendizibal, Maria. (2011) “Imagine Panjim” Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation & LKShttp://grupolks.com/C/PC/Noticias/tabid/87/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/967/language/es-ES/Inaugurada-la-exposicion-publica-del-Masterplan-de-Panaji-India.aspx 

[7] Correa, Charles. Parikh, Ruturaj. DSouza, Rhea. Pereira, Golda. & Hameed, Bhavana. (2014) “Decongestion Model for Panaji City Core” Charles Correa Foundation.

[8] Navhind Times Network. “IPSCDL’s Consultant Asked to ‘Complement’ Comprehensive Mobility Plan Report | The Navhind Times.” The Navhind Times. July 14, 2018.  Retrieved on December 16, 2022 from https://www.navhindtimes.in/2018/07/14/goanews/ipscdls-consultant-asked-to-complement-comprehensive-mobility-plan-report/.

[9] Corporation of the City of Panaji (2013) “Approximations for Pay-Parking, Phase-I in Panaji City”

[10] Times News Network “CCP’s Pay-Parking Tender Comes up -Cropper Again” The Times of India, Goa September 17, 2017. Retrieved on November 15, 2022 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/goa/ccps-pay-parking-tender-comes-a-cropper-again/articleshow/48992561.cms

[11] Notification no: 23/6/2022/MAG/TIS/2408 dated 10 August 2022.

[12] Team Herald “Acute Staff Crunch hits Goa Traffic Police” oHeraldo November 06, 2022 accessed on November 27, 2022 from https://www.heraldgoa.in/Goa/Acute-staff-crunch-hits-Goa-Traffic-Police-/196279

[13] Anonymous CCP employee, personal interview November 2022.

[14] Grengs, J. Levine, J. & Merlin, L.A. (2019) ‘From Mobility to Accessibility’ Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY, 2019

[15] United States. Federal Highway Administration. Office of Transportation Management. “Congestion Pricing : A Primer : Overview,” October 1, 2008. https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/748.

[16] UMTC "Parking Master Plan for Panaji City" Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Corporation"

[17] United States. Federal Highway Administration. Office of Transportation Management. “Congestion Pricing : A Primer : Overview,” October 1, 2008. https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/748.

[18] Anna Orso "Philadelphia can replace some police officers with civilians, arbitration panel rules" The Philadelphia Inquirer November 15, 2022. Accessed November 27, 2022.

[19] Corporation of the City of Panaji Act, 2002

[20] Rittel and Webber (1973) "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning" Policy Sciences 4, 1973,

155–169