Revised parking fine earns BMC Rs 12 lakh within a few weeks

Areas like Crawford Market, Colaba, BKC, Bandra West, etc, will see high parking charges. File pic

The civic body's steep parking fine has generated significant revenue and within a couple of weeks, after the parking fines were reduced, civic officials have already collected fines to the tune of around Rs 12 lakh. Even though the revised fines also attracted criticism, senior civic officials say that the steep fines have encouraged people to use designated parking areas and their occupancy rate has increased since the parking fine was introduced last year.

Civic officials from the traffic department said that since the parking fine was first introduced in July, the BMC had raked in fines worth more than Rs 1.8 crore until the revised rates were implemented. Among the various kinds of parking areas, the civic body collected Rs 97.6 lakh from vehicles that parked within 500 metres of a public parking lot (PPL). The second highest amount was collected from buses and other heavy vehicles amounting to Rs 45.7 lakh and Rs 37.7 lakh from parking on the four arterial roads.

Under the revised rates, however, the civic officials collected the highest amount of fine from the heavy vehicles amounting to Rs 53.5 lakh in just a couple of weeks. The second highest amount of fine, Rs 46.45 lakh was collected from vehicles that parked near a PPL.

Based on an analysis of the PPLs prepared by the civic body, in D ward (including Malabar Hill) the occupancy rate has increased from 43 per cent in March last year to 82.8 per cent in December last year. Similarly, in G North (including Dadar), the occupancy rate increased from 1.28 per cent in March 2019 to 40.3 per cent in December 2019. While the occupancy increased in the island city and eastern suburbs, it declined in the western suburbs in areas like Andheri east. In the BEST depots, however, the ones in the western suburbs had the highest occupancy rate while the ones in the city were the least occupied possibly due to their location.

Civic officials from the traffic department pointed out that the occupancy rate of the PPLs and other parking areas have significantly increased since last year. "Since March last year, the occupancy of the PPLs and BEST depots have increased by more than 20 per cent. More people are using the parking spaces and this will help to decongest the city's roads," said Vijay Singhal, additional municipal commissioner.

After introducing on-street parking in four arterial roads in the city, Singhal added that they are planning to add other arterial roads to the list. "We are planning to introduce one-sided parking on 7-8 more roads and are working out the modalities," he said.

Based on the revised rates announced on January 6, vehicles parking within 500 metres of a public parking lot or a BEST bus depot will have to shell out 40 times the parking charge levied by the public parking lot. In the case of the four arterial roads in the city that have been declared as no-parking zones, vehicles will have to shell out 80 times the parking charge.

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