Car Parking Is Becoming Murderous Business
By Vidyadhar Date
04 March, 2014
Countercurrents.org
A woman was murdered in a suburban train in Mumbai recently because someone wanted to grab her space on the road which she was using for selling vegetables. That is how scarce space has become in Mumbai because of anti-people planning and policies. Yet, motorists want free use of space for parking their cars on the road or inside buildings.
Disputes over parking are now rampant everywhere.Some motorists are now killing each other .Four people were killed in Delhi in the last two months in disputes over car parking. One of them was a law student who was assaulted by other students inside the law college and elsewhere three members of a Mishra family were shot dead.
In Mumbai a man was kidnapped and beaten up because he objected to the parking of an SUV on pedestrian space on the road in Sion on March 23. Subramaniam,50, was then taken by the enraged motorist in the car for an hour and dumped near Kala Nagar junction in Bandra (east) with serious injuries.
These are not stray cases of individuals losing their temper. They are indications of a system gone out of control, a result of thoughtless imposition of rampant motorization without any concern for the society as a whole.
No part of our lives is now free from problems of car parking. To a discerning eye it was evident even during the premier of a Marathi film on Yeshwantrao Chavan, former chief minister and defence minister, recently. There is an irony in the venue of the screening at the posh Inox theatre at Nariman Point in Mumbai on March 12 in the presence of Mr Sharad Pawar and chief minister Prithviraj Chavan.
Ironical because this venue is basically a huge, high rise car park and it shows the utterly ill-thought policies of the government. The film, directed by Jabbar Patel and financed by Mahaashtra government, was screened on Yeshwantrao’s birth anniversary and it would have been more appropriate to show it at the Y.B. Chavan Pratishthan auditorium which is only a few metres away.
Of the 10 floors of the Inox building, eight are meant for car parking. And this constitutes a monumental waste of precious urban space and this in an area with one of the highest property prices in the world. And this is bang next to Vidhan Bhavan. At least this area should be more democratic in character. It is the very opposite of it. If you walk from Mantralaya towards the Vidhan Bhavan buiding, you will find the entire footpath outside the Vidhan Bhavan completely fenced off. So the government is actively endangering your life, making you vulnerable to cars which are driven at a fairly high speed . It cares for cars, not you. That is the clear message. In fact, it goes out of its way to comfort the motorist while humiliating the common people, the pedestrians.. And if you are injured or killed, you will be treated as an illegal walker, you are not supposed to walk on the road, they will say. But cars are illegally parked all around Vidhan Bhavan on the road.
But that is only part of the story. The real scandal is the Inox plot which was owned by the government and its ground was being used for parking for some 130 cars. Then the government agency the Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority had this bright idea. Too many cars were being parked on the road so they thought they should build a high rise car park so that these cars can be parked there. So a capacity of parking 485 cars was created. Now the scandal is that the parking lot is hardly used. People do not want to pay even a pittance that is charged there. They prefer to park free on the road. And then the high spiral drive in the multi storey car park is an unpleasant experience that leaves one giddy. So much for the boast of high technology. So the road is even more congested now than before. And most importantly, the government has lost a valuable plot of land. The whole affair stinks.
So, vital urban space is lost and the problem has worsened. The beneficiaries are the very rich. On the ground floor of this building are shops selling extremely luxurious products. The common man dare not even enter the premises. And that is what we have created next to our symbol of democracy. And this is on public land. And more land belonging to the civic corporation and the government is going to be given away for high rise car parking projects while there is no space for basic services to people or for the government’s own offices. The high rise car park at Bhulabhai Desai road (Warden Road) has also proved to be an utter waste as motorists are simply not using it.Similar is the experience about high rise car parks in Delhi, Kolkata and other centres.
It is therefore astonishing that Mumbai’s new traffic police joint commissioner Mr B.K. Upadhyay wants the civic body to build more car parks as he thinks this is the only solution to the problem of car parking and a permanent one at that. How sadly mistaken he is. And even more mistaken is his view that motorists are willing to pay more for car parking. And then he goes on to say that it is the duty of the municipal corporation to provide space for car parking ? Really ? Sorry, but that is not true at all. That is not at all the function of the civic body which has much more basic obligations to people and which it is miserably failing to provide. He does not realize that providing for car parking while robbing children of space to play is outrageous. He said in an interview to Mid-Day recently that motorists can’t keep cars in their pockets so the civic body should provide the space.
The problem is that a car is not like a refrigerator . When you buy a frig you do not expect the State or the civic body to give you space to keep it. By the same logic, You have to create your own space for a car as well and be prepared to p;ay for it. Enough of this free lunch for the rich. If you cannot afford it in your building or in a parking lot, forget about it. The motorists has no business to buy a car if he or she does not want to pay for parking. Why should the society pay for these guys, why should car parks be built out of the state exchequer, from money that belongs to people but is denied to them for their basic needs. Are not our policy makers and executives aware of the strict rules for car parking and how costly car parking is in Singapore and Hong Kong ? Since, Mr Upadhyay is new to the job one can understand that he is not aware of issues. But even senior bureaucrats have shown total ignorance of the very national urban transport policy which seeks higher priority for public transport and walking over private cars.Unfortunately, this policy is quite regressive when it comes to car parking. On the positive side,it wants charges for parking to be raised so that higher the price of land in a particular area, higher should be the charges. But this policy does suggest high rise car parks to be built and even says that funds to be distributed to the states under the Jawaharlal Nehru national urban mission will be given if this condition is fulfilled.So, merrily the bureaucrats and politicians push anti-people, pro-rich, pro-automobile lobby projects. We do have some NGOs which take up the cause of public transport but they are too mild in their approach and heavily dependent on funding which acts as a deterrent to any spirited action on the issue.
Motorists simply do not like to pay for car parking. That is a universal experience. The way car parking robs urban life of its vitality, creates dead spaces and wastes a huge amount of space is well depicted and documented in an 800 page book the High Cost of Free Parking written by Donald Shoup, a professor at the university of California, L.A. . It is highly relevant for India. But many of India’s planners, politicians and bureaucrats are simply lacking in basic knowledge of the subject and are bent on committing the same mistakes the West made and refuse to learn from the corrective measures they are undertaking.
Building more roads for cars does not help in reducing traffic congestion. In fact, it creates more congestion as more cars then come on to the roads. Similarly, building more car parks does not solve the problem. It makes things more troublesome. These are proven facts and these phenomena are widely studied in the West. That apart, arrogant U.S. diplomats have refused to pay congestion charge in the heart of London claiming diplomatic immunity. We have a similar arrogant class of motorists who are extremely irresponsible, think they are entitled to all kinds of benefits even while they inflict massive damage to urban space and environment.
Sadly, for the sake of car parking we are robbing little children of vital space for playing. Future generations will not forgive us for this crime. As real estate prices soar and cars proliferate an extremely unfriendly environment is created for children inside the compounds of their residential buildings. Of course, it gets even worse outside.
It is often argued that this is the unavoidable price for development. That is nonsense. Countries in the West, which have gone through a major automobile revolution, are now providing less and less space for parking in buildings and less space for cars on the roads. More space is being provided for walking and cycling, parking bicycles. Our anti-people bureaucrats and politicians do not even talk about facilities for parking of bicycles though there are more bicycles on the road than motor cars but this is not noticed because bicycles are less visible.
The authorities are committing a double crime. One is not providing footpaths. And then using that space for parking of cars. You can see this everywhere but I particularly mention the entire Pali Hill in Bandra because it is high profile and home minister Sushilkumar Shinde himself lives there on Nergis Dutt road when he is in Mumbai.
The same outside Joggers Park in Bandra on the seaside. Look at the hypocrisy, the criminal nature and double standards of the upper class. There is no footpath outside the park. The rich come in their cars, some chauffeur driven and some are arrogant-looking huge, aggressive cars. So they want to have a nice walk for themselves in a protected environment but create inconvenience for others outside. With parked cars on either side, ordinary people face constant prospect of being knocked down. And this happens all over the country.
Much of the parking on roads and elsewhere can be easily avoided. Conduct a casual, little study in your neighbourhood and you will find many car trips are over a short distance and can be easily done on foot or by auto rickshaw or taxi. But because parking is free on the road they take out the car. Besides, there is the issue of high ego, vanity and class consciousness.They want to announce that they are rich and can afford a car.
Paul Barter, an expert on parking, made an interesting presentation in Mumbai recently during a visit. He said car parking should not be an essential provision. A toilet is a must in a buiding but not parking. Just as we look down upon people when they urinate on the road, we should look down on people who park their cars on the road.
The trouble is many motorists justify owning a car on the ground that it is more convenient. I found even Marxists talking this way in a most un Marxist way at an international conference on Marxism at JNU in Delhi last year. Perfectly nice people become extremely selfish once the subject of a car comes up because they own one and they don’t want their personal convenience to be challenged..
A seemingly rational argument is that since cars should not be parked on roads, the proper thing would be to provide adequate space for car parking in buildings. Looks fine. But look what will happen. The trouble with this is that this needlessly drives up construction costs as also land costs because land and built space are scarce. We have now begun to see a very ugly spectacle in Mumbai with many buildings providing several storeys for car parking alone. This definitely looks ugly and is a massive, massive waste of resources and space. It does not take much calculation to note that the land occupied wastefully by a parked car exceeds the land occupied by a slum dweller in Mumbai. But the slum dwellers are blamed for encroachment, not motorists because motorists are rich and slum dwellers are poor and are seen as ugly.
Another very very ill-thought scheme of by the government and civic authorities is granting high FSI to builders if they provide for parking for outsiders, for the public, not for residents alone. The racket operates like this. Suppose a builder spends say Rs one crore on car parking for the public. The actual benefit he gets is of the order of at least Rs 10 crores. So it becomes a big racket. The guys are simply minting money, fleecing common people in the process. Now multiply this a hundred and thousand times and you can see the enormity of the ugly things going on. Ashok Datar, transport analyst, has done a very good study exposing this and government authorities have no honest answer to that.
And then there is the cruel impact of the motor car on children. This is what has happened in a well known middle class cooperative housing society, Shardashram in Dadar-Prabhadevi area, next to Sachin Tendulkar’s school Sharadashram in Mumbai. Children can no longer play in the courtyard as cars are packed in the space. The situation is so bad that no individual motorist can take out his or her car. The job has to be done by an expert driver and one has been appointed by the society specially for it. Similar is the situation in many buildings all over the country. So that is the mess we have created for ourselves. We are shooting ourselves in the foot.
The general claim of the motorists is that they have to use the car as public transport is not good enough. This makes little sense. Millions of people in this country go without a car and depend on public transport. It is only when the better off sections start using pubic transport, it will improve.
Taxies and auto rickshaws need and deserve much more space than cars for parking. But they are always discriminated against though they serve many more people than cars can. Our ignorant politicians and bureaucrats need to first read the national urban transport policy which suggests that more space needs to be given for parking bicycles and public transport vehicles. There is an urgent need to increase the charge for car parking which is extremely low at present. Cars must be made to pay very high fees where land prices are high. If we have to solve problems of car parking we must first stop treating motorists like VIPs. . They are not doing us a favour. Motorists impose extremely heavy costs on society. The polluter pays. That is the basic principle. Similarly, a vehicle grabs so much scarce urban space. It must pay a high price for that space.
In March this year Paris launched a policy that sees that half the cars in the city cannot come on the road on any day. One day cars with even numbers on their plates will be allowed and on the next day cars with odd numbers will be allowed to run. London may go the same way soon. I saw an online poll being taken in the Guardian daily of March 18. More than 75 per cent people favoured such restrictions on cars. The world is changing for the better in this respect. We must stop foolishly aping the old, wrong model of automobile dominance that the West is giving up . It is outdated.
(Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist and author of the book Traffic in the Era of Climate Change. Walking, Cycling, Public Transport need priority)
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