Ajay Raina, CEO, Tedra AutomotiveSolutions Private Limited.
What’s the optimum solution for parking cars? If you live in a city and drive a car, youwill have asked this question sometime or the other. Some would go to the extent of suggesting getting rid of thecars altogether is the optimum solution to the challenge of car parking. But,cars or other types of personal vehicles are an urban reality and will be so inthe future as well. And, they all need to be parked!
Every motorised tripends in a parking situation. Truly, when one arrives at a destination by anymotor vehicle, one of the first experiences is of parking. This gives rise toparking problems and solutions.
Problems exist andwe better find solutions. We needoptimum car parking solutions, and before we begin, we should recognizethat optimum has different meanings to car parking users like parkingoperators, city planners, developers and investors.
Two kinds of parkingclearly co-exist. One is Public parking (usually on the street), and the otheris Private parking (in private areas), such as buildings, private land, privatespaces like Hotels, Hospitals, Cinema houses, etc. The individualcharacteristics of an optimum solution, therefore, should be beneficial for allstakeholders.
TACKLING ANDOPTIMIZING PARKING
Increase parkingsupply
This is the firstthing that comes to mind when pondering parking problems and solutions. Essentially,it gets property managers/developers, businesses and central/local governmentsto build more parking facilities.
Increasingon-street parking and Technology: Town planners can design more on-street parking while local governmentscan have fewer parking restrictions and encourage parallel parking. Access anddisplays can be given to people on mobile phones and screen boards to identifyopen parking spaces at a location. This is easy and cost-effective.
Establish minimumparking requirements: By raising the requirements for parking spaces, the demand for parkingcan be reduced. The use of zoning is usual in this context. This method is easyto implement.
Use ofMechanisation and Automation
At 32 mts./car thatare required ideally to park a vehicle, this is probably the most pinching andexpensive use of a real estate in urban India. Compounded by a lack of policyand space in our cities, it surely has made urban living and commuting chaotic andnightmarish.
Lifts and elevators can do wonders for increasing parking spaces as wellas flexibility. Creating space from lesser footage using Height, Width andDepth can help us park more vehicles in limited spaces.
Mechanical and automated car parking solutions are an answer to parkingwoes in Metros and Urban areas. Of late, we find a lot of projects, both residential and commercial,that offer multi-Level parking systems to their clients.
Cities from around the world, such as New York, Boston, London,Stockholm, Istanbul, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo have sought to reform urban parkingpolicies to improve the public realm and manage the demand for vehicle travel. Indian cities have been slow to recognise keyimpacts of rapid motorisation, and to utilise parking management to moderatethe demand for private motorised travel.
Public Parkinghappens in narrow lanes, roadside, street spots, corners, footpaths, by-lanesand anywhere. Majority of this happens free of cost or at very low costs, thusin a way subsidizing use of private vehicles and chaos.
In cities that haveintroduced parking fees (Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, and Chennai, to name a few),the parking fees are far lower than the value of the land on which the parkingis situated. Enforcement is weak, resulting in low compliance with parkingrules and lost revenue.
There is, thus, adire need to have a proper policy framework for management of our cities,especially developing of a Parking Policy and management. We must curb the ‘freefor all, anywhere and everywhere’ approach and reduce the area given forparking. Designated parking areas, parking duration policy, pricing of parkingto generate revenues for better facilities, and discourage long hours. This ismerely scratching the surface of parking problems and solutions and peopleinvolved in this field can choose from these and other methods.
The Government too needs to take a major initiative in adapting technologyfor Public Parking.Policy makers and private professional parking operators can come together andplay a great role in easing this problem with successful business modelsencouraging organised parking and commute. With modern-day technologies, stacking up and using vertical heights topark and retrieve vehicles is convenient and possible.
The health of acity, liveability, how a city feels, looks, how its residents move, how thetraffic flows, how much time do they spend commuting, how much pollution isgenerated...all are solely decided by how a state manages its traffic and, thus,parking. Parking and ease of commutingshould be the prime agenda of our planners in Metro cities and Smart CityProjects.
This aspect of modern day city living should be used as a benchmark forliveability index of a city, considering the chaos we are in and the likely increaseof traffic in future with rural population migrating towards cities. If we failon policies and planning, we will have disastrous consequences. An apt exampleof this is Delhi, our capital city. This aspect needs as much attention ashealthcare and Swachh Bharat programmes.