Illegal parking fine hiked in Mumbai, but 19 public lots remain unused
The civic traffic department on Monday wrote to municipal commissioner Praveen Pardeshi to allow these lots to run for free, until contractors are found for a pay-and-park facility.
In parking space-starved Mumbai, where on the one hand the civic body is charging fine up to ₹23,000 for unauthorised parking, its 19 amenity parking lots, with a capacity of 1,502 vehicles, are lying vacant since 2017, with the space being used for private parking or even as dumpyards for towed vehicles.
Reason? Despite multiple attempts to contract maintenance of these parking lots, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has failed to get bidders.
These 19 parking lots can house between five and 219 vehicles, with each having a different capacity. The civic traffic department on Monday wrote to municipal commissioner Praveen Pardeshi to allow these lots to run for free, until contractors are found for a pay-and-park facility. With the nod from Pardeshi, these lots will be opened for public use soon. Pardeshi told HT, “I have recently agreed to the civic traffic department’s proposal to open these amenity parking lots for free parking, until we find contractors. These parking lots can be used for parking, but in cases where it is not viable, it is okay for the civic body to use them for park towed or abandoned vehicles.”
A senior civic officer from the traffic department said, “Now, that the commissioner has given his nod, we have written to all wards to open these spaces for public. But the wards can use their discretion.”
An amenity parking lot is any plot which has a reservation on it in the Development Control and Promotions Regulation (DCPR), and cannot be developed by the owner of the plot without constructing an amenity on 5% to 15% of the area of the plot, and handing it over to the BMC. In exchange, the civic body gives extra FSI to the owner on the remaining plot.
In 2017, a total of 29 amenity parking lots were handed over to the BMC. In the first lot, the central agency, the BMC’s traffic department, floated tenders and managed to find contractors for four of these 29 parking lots. Despite floating tenders twice, it did not find contractors for the remaining 25 parking lots. These were then handed over to the respective wards, which were directed to float individual tenders for the parking lots at their own pace. The 10 lots where BMC managed to find contractors were then given out for a temporary period of six months to a year.
Over the past 1.5 years, wards have made several attempts to find contractors to maintain these 19 parking lots.