Animesh Rohmetra
animesh.rohmetra1@gmail.com
Walk through Jammu at any hour that matters to ordinary life office mornings in Gandhi Nagar, evening markets in Trikuta Nagar and Channi Himmat, the dense commercial lanes of the old city, or the expanding residential corridors of Janipur and the experience is strikingly uniform. Cars and two-wheelers occupy road edges, footpaths dissolve into improvised parking, junctions choke, and pedestrians are pushed into moving traffic. This condition is routinely described as a traffic problem. It is not. It is a governance problem one that reveals, more clearly than any policy document, how public space is regulated, enforced, and valued.
The pressure on Jammu’s streets is measurable. Official transport datasets and nationally collated statistical series show steady growth in registered vehicles in Jammu & Kashmir over recent years, crossing the two million mark and rising annually. Jammu, as the Union Territory’s primary administrative, healthcare, education, and trade hub, absorbs a disproportionate share of this pressure through daily inflows. Road space has not expanded at a comparable pace. Congestion, therefore, is inevitable. What is not inevitable is the conversion of public streets into default parking lots.
That outcome reflects choices. Parking is the most routine test of urban governance: who controls scarce public space, how rules are enforced, and whether behaviour is shaped through systems rather than slogans. On these counts, Jammu has struggled.
It is incorrect to claim that the city lacks parking infrastructure. Government agencies have invested significantly in structured parking. The modernised General Bus Stand complex, developed by the Jammu Development Authority and inaugurated in 2021, includes a multi level parking cum commercial facility with officially stated capacity for 1,312 cars and 177 two wheelers, alongside bus terminal functions. Under the Smart City Mission, Jammu has added structured parking capacity at Panjtirthi, promoted as a decongestion intervention for the old city zone. Government project information memoranda for upcoming facilities such as the proposed automated multi-level parking system at South Block, Bahu Plaza explicitly acknowledge rising vehicle numbers and detail capacities running into several hundred cars, with automated management systems.
These facts establish an important baseline: the state recognises the parking crisis and has responded with capital investment. Yet the kerb remains crowded. Roads continue to function as free storage space even within walking distance of structured facilities. The gap between infrastructure creation and behavioural change is the essence of the failure.
The reason is well understood in urban policy. Behaviour follows incentives, not announcements. When a driver can park for free on the street immediately outside a destination because enforcement is sporadic or selective structured parking, however large, struggles to attract users. Local reporting and public discussion around utilisation and revenue performance of existing facilities underline this dynamic. Capacity alone does not reclaim public space; governance does.
This disorder is reinforced by legacy urban form and permissive planning. Many neighbourhood markets and mixed use roads were never designed with realistic off street parking, loading bays, or service access for present day demand. Government project notes for areas such as Panjtirthi explicitly acknowledge that constrained built form and limited internal parking push demand onto streets. Yet recognition has not translated into systematic street management. The kerb has become a catch all for parking, loading, vending, and waiting until movement itself becomes secondary.
The costs are tangible. Footpaths are routinely encroached upon, forcing pedestrians children, the elderly, persons with disabilities into live traffic. Effective carriageway width collapses during peak hours, slowing buses and emergency vehicles. Junctions become unpredictable conflict points. National road safety data shows that Jammu & Kashmir records thousands of road accidents annually, with hundreds of fatalities. Chaotic kerbside conditions blocked sightlines, narrowed lanes, sudden stops are recognised risk factors in urban crashes. Parking disorder is not a cosmetic inconvenience; it is a safety hazard.
Municipal action has existed on paper. Jammu Municipal Corporation has issued multiple notifications declaring no parking zones across major corridors. These are legitimate regulatory instruments. The problem is consistency. Without predictable towing, standard penalties, clear signage, and sustained monitoring, such notifications lose authority. Selective enforcement intense during special movements, lax on ordinary days teaches citizens that rules are negotiable. Once that perception sets in, compliance collapses.
Parking chaos also exposes a planning contradiction. Commercial permissions are routinely granted without ensuring adequate off street parking or service access. Markets expand without designated loading and unloading windows. Delivery vehicles occupy carriageways throughout business hours. Individually, such approvals appear manageable; collectively, they overwhelm the street. When land use intensity is permitted without mobility discipline, the kerb becomes the overflow valve.
Budget documents deepen this picture. Parking infrastructure in Jammu does not appear as a single, consolidated budget head. Instead, allocations flow through multiple channels: the Smart City Mission (area-based development and mobility components), urban local body capital grants, and development authority projects. Official budget papers and Smart City financial statements show that funds have been earmarked over successive years for mobility and parking related works, including structured facilities and allied urban improvements. However, as with many urban projects, expenditure is phased, utilisation certificates are released project wise, and outcomes depend on operational integration rather than capital outlay alone. What is demonstrably absent in budget documents is a city-wide parking management framework that links spending to kerbside regulation, pricing, and enforcement. The result is fragmented investment without commensurate behavioural change an accounting pattern familiar to urban governance across India.
Urban experience elsewhere is unequivocal on what works. First, kerbside parking must be priced or prohibited with real enforcement. On street parking is the most disruptive form of parking because it directly competes with movement and walking. If it is cheap or free, it will dominate. Structured facilities like the Bus Stand MLCP cannot succeed unless the kerb is governed.
Second, off-street parking must be frictionless. Entry and exit delays, poor wayfinding, outdated payment systems, and unsafe pedestrian links suppress utilisation. The fact that new project memoranda emphasise automation and digital management reflects official awareness that operations matter as much as concrete.
Third, footpaths must be non negotiable. Jammu’s complaint that there is “no place to walk” is not cultural destiny; it is a design and enforcement choice. Physical protection works when applied consistently.
Fourth, parking governance must be transparent. Parking contracts and allocations invite controversy when opacity creeps in. Credibility requires clear rules, open contracting, and visible reinvestment of parking revenues into footpaths, junction upgrades, bus bays, and enforcement capacity.
Finally, enforcement must be routine, not episodic. Discipline imposed only during special drives is not discipline at all. Norms change only when rules apply every day, in every ward.
Jammu’s parking disorder is therefore not a story of shortage. It is a story of authority. The city already possesses significant assets large structured facilities, more capacity in the pipeline, and repeated regulatory notifications. What it lacks is the institutional resolve to reclaim the kerb as public space and to align planning permissions, pricing, and enforcement behind that goal.
Parking is urban governance in miniature. When public streets quietly become private storage, when pedestrians are displaced, when rules are optional, and when public investment underperforms, the failure is not of space but of management. Fixing parking will not solve every mobility problem. But it will send a powerful signal that Jammu can govern its most ordinary public spaces fairly, predictably, and in the public interest. For a growing city, that is not a small reform. It is the foundation of trust.
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