Sunday, 29 July 2018
Parking made free in Ahmedabad!?!
Sometime last week, AMC started a drive against illegal parking...ie., parking on roads where parking is prohibited. Excellent initiative, must have been taken up ages ago, anyway, welcome move! But, there are some interesting additions to this.
In the first of such drives, a well known club on SG Highway was sealed, ostensibly because members' cars were parked 'outside' the club, on the road. Now, this is a grey area. Why should any establishment be responsible for cars being parked on the road outside it? At most, they can have security guards to direct people away but that too is an ask. Anyway, more later. Now onwards, apparently all such illegally parked vehicles will only be towed away. There will be no spot fines or clamping of vehicles. The only option the owner has is to go to court and get the vehicle released. Excellent decision, again. I've always contended that parking fines in India are way too low and hardly a deterrent. This, given the tedious process involved, is a great deterrent and I'm sure will work very well.
Along with all of the above, parking has been made free everywhere. Yep, that's right. In malls, office buildings, all commercial spaces, nobody can charge you for the parking that they mandatorily have to offer. While this may seem like a good move, I'm not convinced this is going in the right direction. Firstly, anyone using a car uses it for his/her convenience and none other. For all the inconvenience a car causes (pollution, traffic snarls, parking!), it is but obvious that the owner should be responsible. Hence, it is not anybody's duty to provide free parking for cars. Parking fees is an important tool towards sensible usage of 4 wheelers. It should act as a deterrent and nudge car users towards using public transport. Without this, we are only looking at more & more cars being on the road and more & more parking facilities being built.
Let's look at European cities which have successfully kept traffic issues at bay. All of them impose heavy charges on parking and use of city roads thereby ensuring that public transport is a far cheaper and convenient alternative and car owners use cars only when absolutely necessary. In any European city, parking for an hour is at around 2 Euros. 1 litre of Petrol retails at Euro 1.2. If you translate it to our country, we'll have to charge approximately a base rate of Rs. 150 for say 2 hours parking. Contrast this with making parking free!
Singapore all along had very heavy duties imposed on car owners, almost to the extent of the cost of the car itself. This had ensured that Singapore city remains traffic free and people actively use buses and metro rail for transport. Compare that with neighbouring Kuala Lampur. Traffic mayhem despite there being available, similar alternative modes of transport and everything! There you go. Even after providing faster, cheaper alternative transport options, people tend to use cars. Governments have to impose charges where possible to deter this and nudge them towards alternatives. Singapore, of course, now has gone the whole hog and stopped selling cars altogether!
You willingly pay for any service you use. Including paying a service charge at restaurants on top of the bill for what you ordered. So why then should parking be different? Construction costs soar when basements, ramps and mechanical parking assists have to be put up. Why should the establishment not charge for something that they have setup at a cost? What about the operating costs? Ventilation, lighting, cleaning, safety equipment and the most expensive of all, manpower to direct, manage and provide security. Why exactly should this not be charged for? There is just no rationale to the government's decision ordering free parking for everybody everywhere!
If you choose to use a car, you pay for fuel, tolls and parking! Yes, of course! There have to be parking charges. And, they should be high enough to act as a deterrent (I know I've said this umpteen times).