Delhi has more than 4 million registered
vehicles, with nearly 350,000 vehicles being added every year. Easy car loans and
a booming economy mean each household can afford more cars. This growth has created an increasing demand for parking space, bringing about a land crisis in Delhi. But our cities were never built for such large numbers of private
vehicles.
Because of excessive on-street parking, civic amenities (such as the ambulance and fire service) are also being affected besides causing
congestion on roads. In effect, what this means is that there is a subsidy for private life in Indian cities - at the cost of public life. Cars get a hidden subsidy in the form of cheap parking land. It is this subsidy that allows more and more people to buy more and more cars.
Delhi Police’s joint commissioner in charge of traffic says that parking is not a right, it is a privilege – and it is not the government’s job to provide parking… What goes unsaid is that the public transport in this city needs to be improved.
Parking is not a factor in the infrastructure requirements of automobiles—only roads and flyovers are considered infrastructure. Most vehicles in Indian cities are privately owned, and are parked on public land. Since parking is not a major consideration of urban planning in India, it puts an enormous amount of pressure on scarce urban land. Parked cars occupy more than 3 per cent of Delhi’s geographical area! (Delhi allots more public land for parking cars than it does to house its poor.) And the demand is growing each day… Delhi doesn’t have the land to park so many vehicles. The experience of multilevel parking lots in Delhi and other metropolitan centers shows how the business model is struggling, and has not made any impact on congestion in the concerned area.
The authors of the study say that the authorities must recognize the obvious – that parking demand is unlimited, and no amount of supply can meet it. High parking fees are needed to deter the use of cars in cities, relieving city roads of congestion and lowering air pollution from vehicular emissions. It simply makes no sense to promote cheap and subsidized parking in a city which already has too many cars. Delhi would be better off if the Rupees 14.6 billion (proposed to be spent on multilevel parking) was invested in improving public transport instead.