In The Right Direction: Why India Needs A Better Parking Policy

Updated on December 23, 2016

India seems to be moving on the right track to have better parking policy. If reports are to be believed, the Modi-led government may soon allow registration of vehicles only once the vehicle owner produces a certification of availability of parking space. This certification will have to be given to the authorities during the registration process. This move will help the government to overcome the traffic and space congestion woes across the country, especially cities.

For this Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu at an event said, "I am holding discussions with Nitin Gadkari and also sensitising the states. We are moving in that direction (to get such a mechanism implemented) ".

The minister is also keen on making it mandatory that any construction permission would only be given to the developer once they furnish that they have provision for toilets, too. 

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In a city's central business district (CBD) , much of the economic activity is concentrated in a small area. This makes it easier for people to, say, make their purchases in a short period of time without having to commute. This is also the reason why commercial enterprises around CBDs have to be content with very little space. A close look at Delhi's Connaught Place and Mumbai's Nariman Point would show you the same. However, while Connaught Place is the fifth most expensive office space market in the world that charges an annual rent of $157 per square foot (approx. Rs 10,663 per sq ft*) , the monthly parking charge here for category-A parking lots is merely Rs 186 per square metre. This means that a square foot of commercial space costs as much as 50 times of that of a square foot of parking space. In posh Khan Market, India's most expensive retail market, Khan Market Traders Association (KMTA) charges Rs 93 per square metre per month.

Delhi is not unique in this aspect. According to a study of Colliers International in 2011, Mumbai's CBD parking charges were lower. In fact, parking spaces in Connaught Place, Nariman Point and Khan Market cost far more than many cars parked in those space. When compared by Colliers International in 2011, New York's parking charges were 31 times of that of the parking charges in Delhi, and London's was 50 times higher.

When such studies were done across the world, the cost of free parking was found to be mindbogglingly huge. When studies on cruising behaviour was done in CBDs in 11 continents, they showed that 30 per cent of the cars on the roads were found cruising for parking and the average time it took to find a free parking space was eight minutes. All this shows parking spaces are, undoubtedly, valuable real estate that is highly underutilised. George Mason University Professor Tyler Cowen rightly asks: If we don't give away cars, why give away parking spaces?

Further, India faces a much graver problem. Streets here are narrow, while the population density is high. This is especially true of large Indian cities like Mumbai and Kolkata. Despite the fact that only a small minority of the people drive through roads, driving in India does not offer the advantage of speed, like in the US, because roads are congested. So, every vehicle on the road counts. Former World Bank researcher Alain Bertaud once said that transport is mostly a real estate problem. He also argues that Mumbai's streets are too expensive for ox carts to travel.

Here are some interesting facts about the car parking scenario in India's major cities:

According to the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) , car parking slot require 23 to 28 sq mt of land, while a low-income home occupies 40 sq mt. Data show that Delhi's slum population of 4.5 million people occupy merely three per cent of the land, while parking spaces occupy 10 per cent of the city's urbanised land. This means that free parking spaces impose huge costs on low-income households. This is one of the greatest barriers to the government's Housing for All mission. 

In New York midtown area, road area per person is 33.3 sq mt per person; in Mumbai's Null Bazaar, it is merely 1.7 sq mt. This means that a vehicle that stands in Mumbai's Null Bazaar imposes nearly 20 times as much cost than it does in New York midtown area. 

CSE found that in Connaught Place parking demand declined by 10 per cent after the metro came into existence. By developing more mass transit network, valuable space given to parking lots may be reduced to a great extent. Note that Delhi metro is the 12th largest subway network in the world and that the decline in parking demand was merely 10 per cent.

Cities in low-income countries like India are more likely to be monocentric. This means that much of the trips are from suburbs to the city centre. This would mean that many people drive to the Metro station near where they live and travel in Metro to CBDs. But, as they are not likely to drive from CBDs to their work place in their own car, many rickshaw drivers and other vehicles would wait near transit stations in the CBD. This requires greater parking space than in cities where people drive from suburb to suburb for most of their needs.

The solution

Charging people for parking is the best possible solution found by urban planning experts across the world. There is a remarkable consensus in this matter and agreement is near-unanimous. A recent study of Christopher Kost, Ranga C and Shreya Gadepalli published by The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy has some valuable proposals:

Restrict car parking spaces, but allow high-density development in areas where there is access to mass transit

Make people pay separately for parking

Charge for off-street parking

Remove minimum parking requirements

Charge more on high occupancy streets

*The approx value is based on dollar to rupee conversion rate as on December 23, 2016.