Parking fee will not be raised
November 9, 2006
The move to hike parking charges in the city up by an average of almost 400 per cent has been stalled temporarily. Instead of the hike, there is a demand now to develop the existing 137 vacant plots reserved for parking and make them functional.
The unanimous decision to squash the proposal and ‘record’ it—keeping it on hold over for the next three months—was taken by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations (BMC) Improvements Committee on Thursday.
The present rate for parking dates back to 1996, when the municipal commissioner introduced pay and park schemes to regulate parking and streamlining traffic flow. However, in the new proposal, the intention for hiking the parking fees was to encourage car owners to consolidate their trips to their work place and encourage commuters to change their mode of travel to public transport. The proposal also mentioned that these schemes would act as tools to discourage motorists from plying their vehicles in Commercial Business Areas in the city like Nariman Point, Fort, Colaba, Marine Lines, Bandra-Kurla Complex and SEEPZ.
The new policy also aimed at a category-wise hike distributing areas under the A,B and C category. Depending on the areas they are located in—Up Market areas where real estate rates are high as ‘A’, Down Market areas as ‘C’ and those that fall in between, as ‘B’. The increase varied from 163 per cent to 300 per cent based on these categories. The increase in parking charges for commercial vehicles was proposed to be hiked as high as 233 to 633 per cent.
“There cannot be a sudden rise in parking rates and charging more cannot be a method to restrict the use of private transport. It will cause great inconvenience to commuters,” said Amin Patel, member of the committee. “Moreover, there is no definite time-bound programme for development of the reserved plots. In fact, the administration has de-reserved few such plots,” added Ashish Shelar, ex-chairman and member improvements committee.
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