Bids for underground parking lots invited

Mumbai: In yet another step to revive its underground parking project, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has invited tenders to set up two underground parking lots at Zula Maidan, Madanpura and Raosaheb Patwardhan Park, Linking Road, Bandra.

The civic body had appointed a renowned consultant Hafiz Contractor to prepare designs of the project and study feasibility of underground parking. As the designs are ready, the civic building construction department has invited bids for the project.

Civic chief Ajoy Mehta, in his budget speech for the year 2017-18, had announced that BMC plans to introduce underground car parking to tackle the growing need of parking space.

According to civic officials, the Madanpura parking lot, to be set up at Zula Maidan, will be the first underground parking lot in the city. With a capacity of 900 parking spaces, it will accommodate 350 four-wheelers and 550 two-wheeler vehicles. The Rao-saheb Patwardhan Park parking lot will be able to accommodate 600 vehicles. The estimated cost of construction of parking lots at Zulla Maidan and Raosaheb Patwardhan parks is `57.35 crore and `88 crore respectively.

“While coming from suburbs to the city, there is a lot of traffic jams in areas like Mumbai Central, Nagpada, Mohammad Ali Road etc. The situation worsens further due to haphazard parking on both sides of the roads. The Madanpura parking lot is expected to ease traffic woes in these areas. The BMC will have to take into consideration shifting of underground utilities, such as water and storm water drain pipelines,” said a senior civic official.

As per the civic data, there are presently 92 parking lots in the city, of which 47 are in South Mumbai. There is only one parking plot for every 120 vehicles in the city.  Due to lack of parking space, lot of these vehicles are parked on roads.