Patients stepping out of a hospital on Poonamallee High Road wait for 15 minutes for their cars to be brought by drivers from a parking site located more than a km away. Whether it is about commercial areas, hospitals or school zones, what can be broadly termed as the ‘parking problem' is hard to miss.

Parked cars that pile on the street reduce road capacity by 15 to 60 per cent, said a State-level committee on road connectivity and traffic improvements in Chennai. How did the city's road margins turn into free parking zones within a span of a couple of decades?

Poor enforcement of building rules is only part of the problem. The main cause is inadequate parking norms. Parking standards prescribed by the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) seem grossly inadequate. Take, for instance, a 10,000-sq.m commercial building. If this building had been constructed two decades ago, 199 car parking slots would have been provided as prescribed by the then building rules. If the same building is to be constructed now, according to the new master plan standards, the number of car parking slots would still be 199.

Road space used

A direct consequence of this is the rows of parked vehicles that eat into space on public roads. P. Vadivel of the Federation of Residents' Associations of Anna Nagar West and Mogappair says that despite adequate setbacks in some apartments, there is a spill-over of vehicles which end up on the road. “Between 7.30 a.m. and 9 a.m., walking on the road is a nightmare as school vans add to already existing parked vehicle count.”

The growth of cars in the Chennai Metropolitan Area has been staggering. Between 1991 and 2008, the CMDA's studies show that vehicles have grown at an average of about 10 per cent per annum and there are now over 5.5 lakh cars in the city. Despite the phenomenal increase in car population, parking norms have not been proportionately revised. The State-level committee points out that parking demand in commercial area is two times the supply.

G. Malarvizhi, assistant professor at the Transportation Engineering Division, Anna University, who has done a study on parking problems in the city's central business districts, says that the city's Development Control Regulations must reflect time-specific and locality-specific changes.

For example, according to current regulations, a hospital based in T. Nagar is mandated to have the same amount of setbacks and parking space as one in Washermenpet. Existing standards are also silent on innovations such as dynamic pricing, which would entail a higher fee during rush hour, when demand for parking is at its peak.

Apart from adequate modifications to building codes, experts say that the city needs to come out with a comprehensive policy to regulate on-street parking. According to a 2010 study done at Anna University, which looked at the impact of parking on traffic flows in Adyar and Thiruvanmiyur, locations that have been demarcated as parking lots are largely unused. Only about 40 per cent of the space is used. Vehicle-owners just park wherever they want, mostly in front of shops and restaurants.

Subsidised?

There are many streets where the use of public space for car parking is free. Where parking is charged, the amount is only a fraction of what one pays in a mall or a cinema theatre. On-street parking in Chennai, like many other cities across the world, is grossly subsidised, say experts. Since on-street parking is virtually free, vehicles congregate in clusters and create traffic bottlenecks. Ms. Malarvizhi says that when the city gives space for parking, it has to be priced at a premium.

In recent times, civic authorities and commercial establishments have been advocating multi-level public parking facilities. But, the Delhi experience shows that parking prices in such multi-level parking slots also are heavily subsidised to find users. According to the New Delhi Municipal Corporation's estimate, quoted by the Environment Pollution (Prevention & Control) Authority for the National Capital Region in its report to the Supreme Court in 2006, if the capital cost of providing multi-level parking is considered, then to recover it each car would have to be charged Rs.100 an hour. Any rate below this would amount to a subsidy, the report said. At present, multi-level parking charges in Delhi is an average of Rs.30 an hour.

Ravi Damodaran of the Wallace Garden Residents Association says that much of the chaos in sub-arterial roads could have been managed if there had been a unified authority to codify and enforce a set of parking guidelines. “At present, the Corporation decides where parking zones come up, but the traffic police are responsible for enforcement.”

A member of the Citizen for Safe Roads campaign, Mr.Damodaran says that residents have started exploring intelligent choices such as enforcing one-side parking in inner roads and banning on-street parking in any road which is narrower than 30 feet. “Badges could also be distributed so that it would be easy to differentiate between the vehicles of legitimate residents and outsiders.”