Mumbai: Special body, not traffic police, will control parking policy

With the everincreasing parking and traffic menace in the city the state governmentnotified Parking Authority wants to ease the burden of the traffic police by taking over their responsibility of acting against those who illegally park vehicles They are also looking at involving some traffic cops to work with them fulltime to carry out the jobVarious public representatives traffic police BMCs traffic department and NGOs have come together for the parking authority under the chairmanship of Ramanath Jha former IAS officer They now aim to decongest the city by having organised and wellmanaged parkingBMC and urban planners are working on the parking data and creating an onstreet parking map of the city A traffic police officer would be helping them collate the data and identify which roads should be included for parkingThe new parking spaces in the city would be constructed by developers for private buildings and whether commercial or residential they would have to be aligned with the parking authority Representational ImageNew parking ratesIn addition to this the authority is also mulling on getting separate police personnel for their force If all goes to plan challans will be issued and fines will also be collected by the parking authority It might also introduce new rates for parkingSpeaking to midday Jha said These things are still in the initial stages of planning However the authority will be taking the final decision on everything related to parking in the cityMoreover the new parking spaces in the city would be constructed by developers for private buildings and whether commercial or residential they would have to be aligned with the parking authority revealed sourcesmidday was the first to report in October 2018 about BMC exploring the option of turning private parking spaces in housing societies into public ones Later in December 2018 midday had also reported about the start of the parking surveyPrivate spaces turn publicIn February it had also reported on the preliminary findings of the BMCs survey carried out in all 24 wards The findings laid the pattern for the detailed report revealed interesting lacunae with numerous issues which will now have to be looked at on a micro levelA civic official said We are exploring the option of utilising private parking space for a few hours in a private society All of this will be at the discretion of the societyHowever the feasibility of this has to be scrutinised by the planners Once the survey is completed experts will compile these parking lots to create a Geographic Information System GIS map and the space will be digitally governed from there the official addedSurvey reveals KEast and MWest ward habitsA team of 15 urban planners are conductingthe detailed survey of all parking lots in the city in coordination with the BMC Civic officials working on the survey said they have observed that while the industriallyheavy KEast ward Andheri East sees hundreds of buses they utilise 60 per cent of the onstreet parking In the GSouth ward Lower Parel Mahalaxmi and Worli despite the availability of offstreet parking citizens still prefer to park on the roads In the MWest ward Chembur too a lot of residential parking happens on narrow roads The authority will now work on solutions to these issuesIndisciplined wardsE West Chembur sees residential parking on narrow lanesG South Lower Parel Mahalaxmi Worli sees people park along streets despite sufficient offstreet parkingCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates