Will Priced Parking Spaces Decongest Gurgaon?

Economist Donald Shoup once said: “Our parking policies are dangerous nonsense, and they have harmed our cities immensely. Minimum parking requirements damage the city; harm the environment; increase the cost of housing; discriminate against poor people; and increase traffic congestion, air pollution, and now global warming.” Anyone who has studied the effects of minimum parking requirements would agree with him. “To my knowledge, no urban planner has ever argued that minimum parking requirements do not have these effects,” he adds.

Shoup thinks that in almost every city the footprint of parking spaces is higher than that of housing and other buildings. This means that parking is not just a real estate problem. It is the single-biggest real estate problem that we know of.

It is in this context we need to evaluate the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon's (MCG) plan to allow people to rent out their vacant plots as parking spaces. The MCG thinks that this will decongest the city.

Gurgaon's roads are heavily congested because the city adds about 60,000 cars a year to roads. Parking spaces in the National Capital Region (NCR), of which Gurgaon is a part, are expensive.

A household that rents floor space in Gurgaon's prime localities pays huge rent. This is true of a company that leases office space, because Gurgaon is the most sought-after office space destination in India. So, why should cars occupy large tracts of land freely park in the city for many hours? The Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway was considered the worst road in the world because of the congestion at toll booths. Many who travel from Gurgaon to Delhi or Noida every day to work drive too early or too late to avoid congestion. So, this is a problem of great significance. Free parking spaces and unpriced roads invalidate the benefits of living in a city like Gurgaon.

It is estimated that the cost of parking will outweigh all other costs of owning and maintaining a car. If individuals and private institutions are allowed to rent out spaces, there may be more parking lots. When there are more parking spaces, more people may start driving. There may also be more people cruising for free parking because private priced parking spaces would be competing with public, free parking spaces. Without pricing roads and public parking spaces, such measures would not be enough to decongest Gurgaon.