Parking Privileges

A recent study found that major Indian metros have the least parking charges in comparison with other cities across the world.

No matter how many multi-storeyed parking lots get built, random parking continues on our streets. One reason is that illegal parking is not just not penalised, it’s tacitly encouraged by poor enforcement of regulations such as India’s Rules of the Road Regulations, 1989. It’s also cheap. A recent study by Colliers International showed that major Indian metros including Delhi and Mumbai have the least parking charges in comparison with purchasing power parity rates in other cities across the world. Charges in Beijing and Mexico City are five times higher. And they are 60 times higher in Tokyo and London.

Up to 11 per cent of the land in Delhi is swallowed up by subsidised underground, surface and multilevel parking, and much of it goes underused, according to a recent report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE). But land allocation still marginalises the needs of the urban poor, with land given over to cars, not buses. The report concludes that it’s unsustainable for parking to continue so heavily subsidised, and that the cost of upkeep should come from car-owners—and that this will only happen with tighter implementation of laws. For instance, it says that Delhi’s newly built ‘automated’ Sarojini Nagar parking lot is used only 20 to 40 per cent of capacity, while cars continue to be parked illegally—and for free—on the side streets nearby.

Vivek Chattopadhyay, deputy programme manager of CSE’s urban mobility team, says, “A total of 27 multilevel structured parking [lots] have been planned in Delhi, with costs varying from Rs 5 to 10 lakh per car parking space.” Without “varying control zones and pricing strategies and city-based planning with area management plans,” he says, “we can end up with more supply and no real change on the ground, as we have seen in Sarojini Nagar”.