Hike in parking fees, ban on civil construction works in Delhi as pollution levels hit 'severe plus'

Taking serious note of the smog in Delhi, Lt Governor Anil Baijal ordered a slew of measures including hiking the parking fees.

The authorities have also ordered an immediate halt on civil construction works and banned the entry of trucks, except those carrying essential commodities, in the city.

The decisions were approved by Lt Governor Anil Baijal in a meeting which was also attended by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and EPCA (Environment Pollution Prevention and Control Authority) member Sunita Narain among a host of senior officials.

"Emergency meeting on pollution with @ArvindKejriwal. Measures approved include ban on entry of trucks (except carrying essentials), ban on civil construction, school holidays till weekend, hike in parking fees & higher frequency of metro & buses," the LG office tweeted.

The EPCA announced that pollution levels have hit 'severe plus'.

A decision on whether or not to implement the odd-even car-rationing scheme will be taken tomorrow, sources present in the meeting said.

During the meeting, the Supreme Court-appointed EPCA, which is empowered to enforce the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), said it has decided to ramp up the plan to 'severe plus' in view of the prevailing smog episode.

Yesterday, the EPCA had directed authorities to implement measures under the GRAP's 'severe' category, including hiking parking fees and introducing differential pricing in public transport.

Metro announces more trips
Meanwhile, the Delhi Metro today announced that its trains will undertake over 180 additional trips from tomorrow and charge four times the prevalent parking rates to discourage use of private vehicles in light of the alarming pollution levels in the city.

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) will be running 3,317 train trips from tomorrow instead of 3,131, an increase of 186 train trips to provide increased capacity to the public in this weather, it said in a statement.

Even today, metro ran around 90 trips more after Lt Governor Anil Baijal approved the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority's orders announced yesterday.

However, it was decided that the metro will not have to slash commuting fares temporarily as it already has a differential pricing system for peak and off-peak hours for smart card users in place.

The number of trips will remain unchanged on the Red Line and the Airport Express Line.

Besides this, deployment of additional ticketing operators, customer facilitation agents, CISF personnel has been done to facilitate the passengers and their speedy frisking, the statement said.

The augmented services will be in effect till further notice, metro said.

It will effectively lead to 701 daily trips on the Yellow Line against the prevailing 679, 772 on the Blue Line as against 752, 546 on the Green Line as against 438 and 588 on the Violet Line against the current figure of 552, it added.