Car users in Delhi are taking up 10 per cent of the city’s land space for parking and should be made to pay three times higher charges, says a survey by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE).

According to the survey, Delhi would need land the size of over 300 football fields to accommodate future parking demand.

The CSE, which assessed the trend of building multi-level parking facilities, said the expensive parking structures, such as the one in Sarojini Nagar Market, were neither reducing parking chaos nor demand.

The CSE survey, released here on Friday, found ‘sub-optimal use’ of the fully automated parking structure in Sarojini Nagar Market -- at a mere 20 to 40 per cent of its capacity – even as the surrounding area remained gridlocked with cars.

“The Rs 80-crore structure has effectively been reduced to being a shopping mall on free land, thus perpetrating huge subsidy to car owners," the survey said.

It said cost of this parking facility worked out Rs 10 lakh per car. “To keep the system operational, it would require an additional Rs 3 crore a year. If it tries to recover the full cost from parking charges, the rate will have to be Rs 120 per hour!” it added.

Even in the best case scenario, the full revenue from the current parking rates would recover only one-fifth of the operational costs, the survey said.

Calling for an end to parking subsidies and high penalties for violations, Mr Vivek Chattopadhyay, Deputy Programme Manager of CSE’s urban mobility team, said: “Before embarking on massive investments in parking facilities, cities need to adopt policy goals for parking. The National Urban Transport Policy, as also the Supreme Court, have made it clear that a parking policy -- while meeting some parking needs -- will also have to lower personal vehicle travel and urban-peak traffic….”

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