Mumbai: City to get new parking spots to accommodate over 22,000 vehicles across four densely populated wards. This includes G/south's Worli and Lower Parel areas where an additional 800 vehicles-holding Public Parking Lot (PPL) will be set up.
City guardian minister Deepak Kesarkar announced the decision. According to him, new parking facilities will be introduced at four of the wards - D, G/South, K/West and S, which are densely populated and in need of parking space for motorists.
Areas to be covered
The areas include D ward - Kemps Corner, Walkeshwar, Grant Road, Breach Candy, Malabar Hill, Girgaum and Mumbai Central. K/West - in Andheri. S ward - Bhandup and Kanjurmarg. Lastly, at G/South - in Worli, Prabhadevi and Lower Parel.
At present, in total Mumbai has around 45,000 to 48,000 parking spaces for vehicles. Out of these, PPL has parking spaces for 27,295 vehicles. The number of functional parking lots is 31, while 21 others are currently non-operational due to various developmental works.
Apart from this, 91 on-street parking lots at societies, designated spots on roads, etc. According to BMC, more on-street parking will be introduced, in phases. In its first phase, 504 on-street parking spots will be introduced in the four wards, as mentioned above.
At the city’s second commercial hub, according to Mumbai Traffic police authorities, Lower Parel/Worli area, there are 4,386 vehicle-capacity PPL – which holds 915 spaces for two-wheelers and 3,486 for four-wheelers. The figures for other areas like Bandra-Kurla Complex and Nariman Point, which are considered commercial hubs as well, were not provided by the authorities.
However, talking about Lower Parel’s parking situation, there are five PPL, which are Mumbai Mill, Jupiter Mill at Senapati Bapat Marg, Artesia Building, Apollo Mill Compound and Sreeniwas Cotton Mill Next to Kamala Mills. Despite this, motorists complain about the lack of space. To combat this no-space parking situation and to avoid illegal parking, Pravin Padwal, Joint Commissioner of Police, Traffic, confirmed that a new PPL will be shortly introduced in the Lower Parel-Worli area with a capacity of 800 vehicles.
The new parking lots will be constructed with a multi-level electro-mechanical system, also called as shuttle and dolly. This allows maximum space and less congestion.
Currently, in the three divisions of Mumbai, MH1, MH2 and MH3, the total number of registered vehicles, as per the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, is 1,40,899. The number of vehicles has crossed the 45 lakh mark, including two-wheelers, four-wheelers, autorickshaws and ambulances.
