Your Parking Space Just Doubled

Your Parking Space Just Doubled
The Times of India (Mumbai edition)

It’s taken six months for the rulebook to be amended, but Mumbaikars now have a reason to cheer. The state government has finally approved the amendment of the Development Control (DC) rules to double ‘off-street’ parking spaces in new housing societies, malls, cinema halls and other important government and private establishments.

The new rules will allow smaller tenements with an area of 225 sq ft in the island city to claim a parking space. In the suburbs, this has been brought down to 450 sq ft from the previous 700 sq ft limit.

More parking has also been made available for hotels, shopping complexes, educational institutes, markets and stadia and clubs. For one, the state has doubled the mandatory parking space in cinemas and multiplexes from the current four percent of the total seats to eight percent. For private hospitals and industrial complexes, it has been doubled to one parking space for every 1,500 sq ft of floor area from the existing 3,000 sq ft. Hotel developers have to provide standard parking space for every 600 sq ft of the total floor area of the establishment. It was initially 1,200 sq ft. (See A home for your car). The notification comes at a time when the BMC is struggling to deal with the parking menace.

“The state’s decision to modify the existing rule 36 of the Development Control regulation has come as a shot in the arm in our efforts to provide sufficient parking space to citizens. However, effective implementation of these rules will be a challenge in the backdrop of the changing urban landscape of the city,’’ said a senior official of the development plan department.

“Developers will not mind constructing more only-parking floors since it also means free FSI,’’ said Niranjan Hiranandani, of Hiranandani Constructions. Civic officials, too, are of the opinion that the amendments will ensure a spurt in construction of multi-storey podiums and other parking facilities by builders, but compliance of the law, they said, will pose a problem.

The state, however, has an uphill task ahead if it. Every day, 400 new vehicles are registered in the city. By 2011, more than 16 lakh private vehicles will ply our roads. Currently, the available road space in the city is only 63.31sq km, of which at least 13.8sq km is lost on account of unauthorised and unplanned parking.