What are the car parking challenges in India?
India currently has over 4+ crore cars on its roads. The current legal parking infrastructure is not geared to address such volumes across cities. Some of the major parking centric challenges Indians cities face today include -
Limited legal parking spaces: One of the biggest challenges for a vehicle owner is finding a legal parking spot at a desired location. Most of the parking locations are already saturated or there is limited current capacity. Vehicles continue to outnumber existing parking spaces, across India, leading to illegal roadside parking.
Parking mafia & unregulated tariffs: Across cities, there is a deep-rooted land mafia running illegal parking spots on vacant plots. Which leads to unregulated tariffs being charged by these operators. Additionally, these illegal parking spots lead to traffic bottlenecks and an underwhelming experience for vehicle owners.
On-Street vs Off-Street Parking Skew: Another unique problem that plagues India is the debate over on-street parking vs off street parking. Usually, the former is cheaper and easier to access, leading to a surge in on-street parking. Stark differences between on-street parking and off-street parking is also skewed, funneling more vehicles onto streets.
Non-Smart Residential Parking Management: Most residential societies have a limited number of parking spots available. With the increase in vehicle ownership, managing residential parking spaces is a tall task. Additionally residential societies lack smart parking management systems to optimally allocate parking to residents and non-residents.
In the present times what parking policies are required in the country?
Utilization of private land: The govt should take steps to partner with private landholders to create legal parking spaces. In other words, any private landowner should be able to submit and get an approval for running a parking lot on his/her land. Through this initiative, landowners will be able to create a revenue stream and add to the parking lot inventory at a city level. We have partnered with Dehradun traffic police to promote this migration from vacant plots to parking lots.
Smart FASTag Enabled parking: The government needs to promote smart parking solutions like FASTag parking systems. Which allow parking lot owners to manage, track and monitor vehicles digitally. Ensuring a smoother parking experience.
Shared Parking Solutions: For example, Park+ has partnered with BEST to unlock over 50+ bus depots across Mumbai to the public. Vehicle owners can now park their vehicle at any of the BEST bus depots between 8 AM - 10 PM, at a nominal rate. The same initiative can be replicated in other cities, to unlock such shared parking opportunities within high density areas.
Real Estate Development: There is a need to ensure that residential societies/malls/ corporate parks create dedicated parking lots while planning any kind of development. A robust parking first approach will ensure that any real estate development which takes place has legal parking lots for users/residents.
What are the smart vehicular systems that can be utilized?
Digitally discoverable parking: Finding a parking spot can be made easier by taking a digital first approach. Where a user can discover and book a parking spot on his smartphone. Through this approach, the user experience becomes better, and the entire parking flow gets digitized, ensuring better tracking and management.
FASTag Enabled Parking: There is an opportunity to make parking faster, by dovetailing on the present FASTag infrastructure. Existing parking spaces can be modified to enable FASTag based parking, which requires no manpower and ensures a complete digital first flow.
Smart Access Control Management System: There is also a need to make vehicular management systems across residential societies/malls/business parks smarter. In other words, real estate owners should be able to optimize their parking inventory according to vehicular flows. Ensuring a smarter way to unlock unoccupied parking spaces.
EV Zones: EV’s are the future of mobility and India is set to be the hub for EV innovation. With the rise in EV adoption rate, there is a need to create exclusive EV zones which can act as both EV charging stations and parking stations for EV ‘s.
What is the future of parking systems in the country?
The future of parking systems will depend heavily on the collaboration between governments, real estate developers and smart parking providers. As our cities get denser and car ownership increases, there will be a need to provide citizens with smart parking solutions which can monitor/track and offer seamless parking experience.
Real estate developers, govt institutions and digital first smart parking providers will have to work in tandem to offer solutions which cater to the demand for car parking at various geographical locations and timings. In the Indian context, FASTag enabled parking and smart access control systems will see an uptick across cities. Smart cities of the future will only be able to succeed if they have smart parking infrastructure.
Additionally, with the advent of specialized self-parking vehicles and robotic parking lots, parking as a space is set for disruption and innovation.