MCD invites bids for ITO parking

Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

The project for a multi-level underground parking at Shaheed Bhagat Singh Park on Bahadurshah Zafar Marg is finally ready to take off
with Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) inviting bids for it on Monday. This will be the biggest parking facility made under parks in the city work has already started on four such parking sites. The facility will accommodate about 700 vehicles and the park on top will be restored after work has been completed.

The plan is to construct a ramp parking under half of the total four-acre area of the park. This way, the only green space available in the congested commercial area will be retained while the problem of parking gets sorted out. "The idea behind using only a part of the park is to ensure that people can use it even as construction is going on. The cost of construction as well as maintenance will be recovered through the parking and conversion charges,'' said an MCD official.

The parking, which will go three levels down, is expected to be ready within the next 15 months. The cost of construction is estimated around Rs 60 crore.

While the project will address the parking woes at ITO, the government is trying to expedite it also because creation of a parking space is essential for the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project to take off in the area. Vehicles are now parked all over footpaths and in the service road.

Said an official: "With so many offices in the area, parking has always been a problem. Taking into account the large number of cars parked here, we decided to make the parking at Bahadurshah Zafar Marg larger than other parkings being constructed in the city.'' According to sources, even as there is space for only around 500 cars in the authorized parking lots, around 1,500 vehicles are parked in the area on any given day.

Around 24 such parking facilities will be constructed under the green cover in Delhi. The idea is to have them ready for use before Commonwealth Games. Other parking sites where work is being carried out include Hauz Khas, Munirka, Model Town-II and Gandhi Nagar. Bids have also been called for construction of a parking facility at a vacant plot in Janakpuri. All of them will be conventional parking sites for which cost of construction is low as compared to automated parking sites.

The MCD had proposed a stack parking lot at ITO near the police headquarters in 2007 but the plan has been scrapped as the corporation could not get the required permissions from other agencies to start construction.