Development Plan: BMC plans to end parking woes

As the civic body miserably fails to efficiently manage on-street as well as off-street vehicle parking, The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is now looking forward to setting a 'Parking Authority' as mentioned in the Development Plan (DP) 2034. The DP mentions that there needs to be a regulation to reasonably constrict parking on public places. The parking authority will be vested with the responsibilities of overseeing parking arrangements in the city and managing the parking spaces.

Despite the move, the parking chaos in the city is yet to be resolved. The parking authority is a long term process and involves four different agencies— Mumbai Traffic Police, Non-government organisations, Regional Transport Office and the BMC.

The civic chief will be sending the proposal of the Parking Authority to the state government, an officer privy to the process informed.

The BMC has initiated the process for inviting contractors for the operation and management of the 92 on-street parking and 18 off-street parking lots. However, the civic body has only managed to start seven off-street parking (the public parking lots) and not more than 14 on-street parking.

"We have floated the tender two-three times but we are not getting the expected response for appointment of contractors to operate and manage the public parking spaces. Later, the tenders were floated by changing some conditions to encourage contractors. One reason for the poor response is the reservation for women's self-help groups and unemployed youths. The other main reason is the public opposition for demarcated parking spaces," said Atul Patil, Deputy Chief Engineer, BMC's Traffic department.