Park car at home or pay taxes: new plan

Cars are out, streets need to be declogged, it’s time to shift gears. Get a motorised cycle, keep your SUV for weekend picnics—or ...

Cars are out, streets need to be declogged, it’s time to shift gears. Get a motorised cycle, keep your SUV for weekend picnics—or pay taxes for crowding the city.

In a move to discourage further proliferation of private motor vehicles and to ease the resultant traffic congestion, the Centre wants to levy dedicated taxes (on private cars owners) that would go towards funding ‘‘non-motorised’’ urban public transport systems and ‘‘segregated cycle tracks’’ and pedestrian paths.

The Centre’s new Urban Transport Policy — which the states will be persuaded and part-funded to adopt by Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad tomorrow — is aimed at reducing motorised transport on roads and encourage eco-friendly public transport system or bicycles.

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To this end, development and commercialisation of lighter and more efficient bicycles is going to be supported by the Centre. So that the market is flooded with chic lighter bikes with gears and tubeless tyres and electric bikes of international standard so that you can travel longer distances.

The Centre is serious. A separate fund has been envisaged to support the construction of cycle tracks and pedestrian paths in all million-plus cities — 50 per cent of the costs would come from the Central Government.

As a first step, the construction of 50 km of cycle tracks in all million-plus cities and 100 km of such tracks in three-million plus cities are going to be supported.

As for the other option — mass rapid transport system (MRTS) — the Centre is prepared to shoulder ‘‘substantial financial burden’’. Since capital investment requirement is huge the Centre ‘‘would encourage the levy of dedicated taxes that would be credited to an urban transport fund and used exclusively to meet urban transport needs’’.

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The logic is that dedicated taxes are paid more willingly than general-purpose taxes since their utilisation is more clearly visible. There will be taxes payable for congestion, even parking charges will be hiked to discourage use of private cars for daily transportation.

New Delhi has a plan to declog your streets

	• Centre wants to levy ‘dedicated taxes’ on private cars owners that will fund ‘‘non-motorised’’ urban public transport systems • Will support development and sale of lighter, more efficient bicycles • 50 km of ‘‘segregated cycle tracks’’ in all million-plus cities; 100 km of such tracks in three-million plus cities • Will help fund mass rapid transport system in states • Greater use of private capital in transport upgrade