The gruesome murder of two brothers over a parking slot at Saki Naka has once again brought to light the lack of parking space in the commercial capital of the country.
The gruesome murder of two brothers over a parking slot at Saki Naka has once again brought to light the lack of parking space in the commercial capital of the country.
With the number of vehicles rising every day in the city, the parking problem is getting worse by the day. Making things even worse, there is no official collective record of parking lots in the city.
The BMC, Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), the railways and the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) all are into parking “business” and have independent and scattered data, but not a collective one. Moreover, there is no control and monitoring over the various slots spread across the city.
“Parking in Mumbai is one of the biggest issues today. I think since Independence, there has been no significant addition to the parking lots in this city. It is time the government took up this issue,” said Nitin Dossa, executive chairman, Western India Automobile Association.
There are about 19.8 lakh vehicles in the city and not more than 500 official parking lots, belonging to various government agencies.
The latest economic survey of Maharashtra found that the total number of vehicles in Mumbai and its suburbs has touched 19.79 lakh, which is 10.5% of the total motor vehicles registered in the state as on January 2012 (188.27 lakh). This means there are about 16,578 vehicles per lakh population.
As far as parking lots are concerned, there is no official count, though there are around 12,000 pay-and-park slots. While the BMC has parking lots for not more than 16,000 four-wheelers, the MSRDC and MMRDA have a handful of parking lots that are expensive and the railways have a limited lots outside stations.
The BMC plans to generate 45,000 sqm of additional parking space with 689 parking slots at Lower Parel and Saki Naka.
A recent parking census done by Mumbai Environment Social Network, an NGO, revealed a wide gap in the demand and supply of parking spaces. “Every year, about 60,000 cars are added. Each new car requires three parking spaces — one at the residence, one at the workplace and one for other occasions — of 100sqft space. Thus 60,000 new cars require 150 acres of parking space,’’ the study added.
Jitendra Gupta of Citizens’ Transport Committee, who recently conducted a citizen walk to study the problem of parking along the Lal Bahadur Shastri Road in the eastern suburbs, found that haphazard parking was leading to traffic jams too. “There is a real need to upgrade the parking capacity of this city. Once we do that, then we have regulations in place so that there is not a free-for-all like the case today,” Gupta said.
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