Nine years on, BMC gets only 9 per cent public parking spaces

Mumbai: With BMC managing to get only 4,264 out of the 46,366 public parking spaces (nine per cent only) since 2008, the civic body’s scheme of developing public parking lots by offering additional incentive floor space index (FSI) has flopped badly.

Civic officials said that thus far, only nine parking lots containing 4,264 parking spaces had been handed over to BMC by developers under the scheme.

Of these, 1,051 were in the island city; 2,903 in the eastern; and 310 in the western suburbs. Another nine parking lots with 6,489 spaces had also been completed but were yet to be handed over.

Corporators termed this a complete failure, claiming that the civic body had allowed builders to take advantage of the policy. Mohsin Haider from Congress said, “It has been nine years now, but BMC has not received even 10 per cent of the parking spaces. It shows that the scheme is a complete failure.”

Civic officials admitted that several developers from places such as Parel and Worli had not yet handed over parking lots to the civic body. However, they denied that BMC was facing losses in the scheme.

“The FSI will be given to developers only after they hand over parking lots to the BMC. We are also charging premium on the FSI,” said a senior civic official from the roads department.

Civic officials also blamed people for failing to make use of public parking lots. “We have made available 847 parking spaces at  Lower Parel; 204 at Altamount Road; and 1,269 near Nahur railway station. We are even offering facilities like monthly passes, night discounts etc. at these lots. But people still prefer to park expensive vehicles on roads instead of paying for parking lots,” the senior civic official said.

BMC in 2008 sanctioned 61 public parking lot proposals under Development Control Rules (DCR) 33(24).

The DCR clause dealt with development of multi-storied public parking lots (PPLs) on private plots in lieu of additional incentive floor space index (FSI).

As per the scheme, the permissible incentive FSI was 0.5 if PPL was within 500 m area of important locations such as railway stations, ST depots, government and semi-government offices, religious and tourist places and 0.4 in other cases, subject to a maximum FSI cap of 4 in the island city and 3 in the suburbs.