Spanner on Mumbai's free floor space project

Builders exploit civic administration's plan, make fortunes

Published on:

11 Jan 2011, 6:48 am

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) project to provide free floor space index (FSI) to builders creating public parking slots has gone all wrong. The builders are exploiting the project to fill their coffers.

They are using the free area provided by the BMC in the land-starved Mumbai to construct buildings, and culling out public parking space from parking area earmarked for visitors and residents. An investigation has been launched into the case while the Maharashtra government has put on hold any further approval for parking FSI in the island city region of Mumbai.

The FSI scheme was launched in Mumbai in April 2009 by the civic authority to cater to the parking demands of the rapidly growing fleet of vehicles. Projects creating public parking slots could earn an extra FSI equivalent to 50 per cent of the area used for the purpose. FSI is the ratio of built-up area to the plot area and is controlled to contain the external costs imposed by high rise buildings on their surroundings. The builders were to construct a minimum of 50 parking spaces and hand them over to the BMC free of cost to earn free FSI. Other eligibility criteria were minimum plot size and proximity to the main road.

An expert committee set up by the state government reviewed 60 proposals fulfilling these requirements and passed 31 in just 18 months based on their “suitability”. Most of the parking spaces are concentrated in the city’s mill land area of Lower Parel-Worli region creating 20,000 parking slots in a small area.

What other cities are doing:

	Portland, Oregon: An overall cap of 40,000 parking spaces downtown increased public transport usage from 20-25 per cent in the 1970s to 48 per cent in mid 1990s. Boston: Parking requirements frozen at 10 per cent higher than the 1973 levels has helped meet the federal clean air standards. Shenzhen: Hike in parking fees during peak hours lead to 30 per cent drop in the parking demand. Tokyo: Despite high car ownership Tokyo provides less parking slots-only 0.5 slots per 100 sq meters in commercial buildings. Bremen: No free parking in city centre. Parking charges higher than public transport cost. Bengaluru: Variable parking price with higher rates during peak hours and lower prices during off-peak hours.