Intelligent parking at Connaught Place

The parking lot at Baba Kharak Singh Marg will be the first multi-level parking project to be completed before the Commonwealth Games.

The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) had awarded the work to DLF on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis. The firm will make revenue through advertisements and by using 25 per cent of the building for commercial purposes.

This parking lot will address the parking woes of Connaught Place and surrounding areas. The NDMC is building a similar parking lot in Sarojini Nagar with a capacity of 824 cars.

This, too, shall earn revenue for the firm from advertisements and by using 25 per cent of the space for commercial purposes.

Delhi has more than 60 lakh vehicles and nearly 1,000 new vehicles are added to this number daily.

In the past seven years, the MCD, supposed to come up with 14 multi-level parking lots, has managed to start work on one site—in Kamla Nagar. In 2003, the MCD had announced the construction of 16 automated multi-level car parks. However, only 14 have got the go-ahead.

These multi-level parking lots are to come up in areas such as South Extension I and II, Defence Colony, Greater Kailash I and II, Karol Bagh, Shastri Park, Lajpat Nagar, Kirti Nagar among others.

The MCD is now claiming that these parking projects are not linked to the Games. “These parking lots are not linked to the Games and work on the automatic parking lots will start soon,” said Deep Mathur, director press and information, MCD.

Apart from the fully automatic parking lots, the civic agency has planned to make 21 conventional multi-level parking lots, too. “We are also constructing two stack parking lots at Paharganj and Karol Bagh. The parking lot being at Jawahar Lal Nehru stadium is the only one which has a deadline of Games,” added Mathur.

The situation has been made grim by the fact that the MCD has also still not identified parking space along the 2,813 commercial and mixed land use stretches as per the provisions of MPD-2021.