Chennai’s Parking Policy Parking Reimagined

After years in the making, Chennai has finally adopted a progressive, city-wide Parking Policy in 2025 to help the city reimagine how street space is shared, prioritising people over vehicles, and paving the way for more equitable, efficient urban mobility, writes Sangami Nagarajan, Sr Associate Urban Planning, and Venugopal AV, Programme Manager, ITDP India.

With a population of 15.37 million and 9.2 million registered vehicles, the Chennai Metropolitan Area (CMA) faces a severe parking crunch as there are nearly two vehicles for every three people in the city.

This year, the city took a historic step toward better parking management by launching a progressive Parking Policy for the entire 5,904 sq. km of the CMA, which includes four corporations – Chennai, Tambaram, Avadi, Kancheepuram, 12 municipalities, 13 town panchayats, 22 panchayat unions and one special grade town panchayat. The policy was strategised and developed by the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (CUMTA), who will also oversee its implementation and monitoring. Since April 2022, ITDP India has been a key technical partner, supporting CUMTA in shaping this landmark policy.

This policy not only addresses the city’s growing parking challenges through area-level parking plans, Travel Demand Management (TDM) measures, but also brought together key stakeholders—including Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC), Avadi and Tambaram Corporations, Traffic Police, Highways, and Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA)—through extensive consultations.

The Parking Policy: Transforming Urban Mobility

CUMTA’s newly adopted Parking Policy 2025 is more than just a set of regulations—it’s a transformative approach to managing limited parking space efficiently, reducing congestion, and improving mobility.

The key highlights of the policy:

Managing parking at the area level and creating neighbourhood wide solutions, to prevent spillovers:

With the new policy, Chennai is shifting from scattered parking management in isolated streets, to a structured, Area-Level Parking Management plan with demand-based pricing, clear regulations, and smart enforcement. The plan allocates parking spots in every street, based on the demand, and uses both ground teams and technology to manage parking efficiently across the neighbourhood.

Managing parking in a few streets isn’t effective and can make the problem worse by causing spillover and more traffic in the adjoining streets. But when we look at a whole area and its network of streets together, we can address the neighbourhood’s need for parking more effectively. This also ensures that street space is used efficiently and is accessible to all street users. By using a demand-based pricing system, we can discourage unnecessary car/bike use and encourage people to choose more sustainable options, like public transport or cycling.

Prioritising Pedestrians, Cyclists, and Public Transport users, Before Parking:

The policy ensures that the city agencies build safe, continuous footpaths and well-integrated NMT infrastructure. The policy gives precedence to footpath allocation over parking. It is ensured that parking space is allocated to a street, only after sufficient footpaths and carriageway space is available.

More than 60% of trips starts and ends on foot. Poor footpaths/no footpaths push pedestrians onto carriageways, increasing their exposure to moving vehicles and reducing safety. Presence of NMT infrastructure reduces vehicle dependence, easing parking demand, and optimising street space, ensuring safer, more inclusive streets. This way parking plans will also nudge the city agencies to ensure walkable footpath are available, leading to wider footpath coverage.

Demand-Based Dynamic Pricing and Smart Enforcement to Shape People’s Parking Behaviour

Parking rates under the new policy will be dynamic based on the area. It will vary, by vehicle size, location of the parking spot, time of day, and demand. On-street parking will be priced higher than off-street options (government or private MLCPs, parking lots, etc.). This will nudge those wanting to park their vehicles for long term (more than two hours) to look for off-street options and allowing the on-street parking lots to be open for short terms users. Pre-paid parking will replace post-paid models to encourage planned usage.

As per the parking policy, enforcement measures will be taken up for the following kind of violations: double parking, parking in no-parking zone, parking on footpath, non-payment of parking fees etc. These violations will be discouraged with the use of technological interventions through sensors, cameras, etc. and on-ground parking teams.

Pricing strategies help manage demand for parking, reduce congestion, and discourage personal vehicle user. Only those willing to pay end up coming in cars and bikes, while the rest may turn to other sustainable options. The rates have been set based on factors such as, how majority of the people commute while visiting the area, availability of public transport, land use, and considerations for traffic management.

Chennai to take a centralised approach to parking management with a Parking Management Unit

The policy establishes the need for a single authority to manage parking holistically. The Parking Management Unit will be this single authority and will function under CUMTA. It will be responsible for planning, pricing, enforcement, and implementation across agencies.

A single authority streamlines decision-making, prevents fragmented implementation across agencies, and ensures consistency in pricing, enforcement, and monitoring. In many other cities, this was a critical reason why parking policies failed to bring the results as expected, as the implementation and enforcement were split among multiple agencies.

Policy allows for Legal & Policy Amendments to other key legislations

For on-street parking spaces: As per the policy, Traffic Police, Urban Local Body, and Road Owning Agency can pass an official order to delegate parking responsibility and enforcement to CUMTA’s PMU. This will ensure seamless management across agencies.

For off-street parking spaces: The policy recommends amendments to TNCDBR (Development Control Regulations of TN). This will help redefine how much off-street parking must be made provided in any property development. For example, in areas with high coverage of public transport, the overall number of permissible parking lots is reduced. This follows the concept of parking maximums, to ensure people use the public transport that is easily available and are not dependent on personal vehicles.

Contextualising the existing legal framework is critical for effective enforcement, regulatory clarity, and integrating parking seamlessly into urban planning frameworks.

As per the current legal framework, the parking management roles are fragmented with Traffic Police and Urban Local Bodies on planning, pricing, implementation and enforcement. The new policy allows CUMTA to take up the responsibility from different agencies and be the sole management unit- through the PMU.

 Parking Fee collected from the area to be re-invested back in the area

Surplus parking revenue will be ring-fenced for local improvements, including better footpaths, cycling infrastructure, and public spaces. This approach ensures that the benefits of effective parking management are directly felt by the community, enhancing the quality of life and encouraging more sustainable modes of transport.

Unlike traditional models where parking fees is looked at as a general pool of revenue, not linked to any one location, Chennai’s Parking Policy ensures that the revenue collected is re-directed to prioritise improvements in that specific location.

 Currently, the annual parking revenue in Anna Nagar is approximately Rs. 35 lakhs. However, with effective parking management, it is estimated that this could increase to Rs. 3.3 crore per year. This is because, the current practice in Anna Nagar involves pricing per parking slot, rather than, an hourly basis, and not all streets have designated parking slots, resulting in an isolated approach. In contrast, the proposed plan adopts a cluster approach with hourly pricing, ensuring a more organised and efficient system. This revenue will be reinvested into improving Anna Nagar’s mobility, streets, green spaces, etc.

Enforcement strategies are an important tool for behaviour change. The focus of the policy is to not penalise the violator but discourage the violations. By adding penalties and punitive actions to the violations, people’s parking habits can be modified for the better.

Future-Proofing Chennai’s Streets

The policy also allows for some future-proof strategies including:

Urban Freight Management: This is a structured city-level and area-level approach to regulate the movement of goods. This ensures dedicated loading/unloading zones are allocated on the streets to reduce congestion and improve last-mile logistics.

 EV Charging Integration: To ensure that streets can accommodate the growing number of electric vehicles (EVs), the parking policy emphasises the need to integrate both on-street and off-street e-charging infrastructure. By planning for EV charging within parking spaces, the policy supports the shift to cleaner mobility.

 Travel Demand Management (TDM): The policy also allows to create customised strategies for schools, workplaces, and commercial hubs by promoting sustainable commuting options, staggered work hours, and shared mobility to reduce peak-hour congestion.

Implementation and monitoring

Currently CUMTA has kickstarted the implementation of the policy through Area Level Plan in Anna Nagar. It will roll it out by hiring parking service providers who will manage collection of fees, enforcement etc. This will be a pilot intervention, learnings from which will inform future implementation. Since this is a technology driven parking management plan, CUMTA has also initiated the development of a parking app and a centralised command center for monitoring. The implementation of this pilot will be monitored through 14 robust Key Performance Indicators.

The policy doesn’t force citizens to choose between driving and walking or taking public transport. Instead, it ensures that everyone gets their fair share of space on the road. It isn’t just a document—it’s the end of a bad game and the beginning of a better city. And that’s a milestone worth celebrating.