The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) undertaking will design and manage parking lots in the city. The transport and infrastructure planning think-tank set up by the state government, the Mumbai Transformation Support Unit (MTSU), has asked the BEST to take charge of parking of vehicles and the funds generated from it could be used to improve the parking lots and Mumbai’s public transport.
There are proposals to use measures like a congestion charge, on the lines of London, once the system is established.
A senior BEST official said the proposal was given to the BEST during the planning of AC bus routes as encouraging use of air-conditioned bus services in Mumbai cannot be seen in isolation, with a parallel strategy for discouraging use of private vehicles being equally important.
The plan includes management of parking lots. BEST could take them over, design, improve and upgrade them and fix the fees as per the district, on behalf of the BMC. Funds generated from this can be used to improve and upgrade the lots and also to strengthen their bus services.
\\To do this, the BEST would first need to study the formal and informal parking lots, capacity and behavior of vehicle users and the number of rational parking lots and pricing for them. All these parking issues could be reviewed by a committee comprising the BEST’s general manager, the traffic police chief and the additional municipal commissioner of BMC.
Asked how the BEST would be connected with parking lots, the official added that the BEST being Mumbai’s public transport could play an important role in cutting down the crowd of private vehicles and provide rides to users of those parked vehicles, which could be kept outside the busy business districts.
