New Delhi: Every morning thousands of office goers roam around for 20-30 minutes in search of parking in Bengaluru’s Gandhinagar and Infantry Road circle blocks, even ₹Most of the space near the Rs 80 crore Freedom Park multi-level car parking remains vacant.
The situation is no different in Delhi also. A study by Jamia Millia Islamia in 2025 found that motorists in Delhi waste an average of 20 minutes every day looking for parking – fuel, time and often anger before the workday even begins.
This pattern is repeated across cities in India: expensive multi-level car parking (MLCP) towers lie half-empty while nearby roads remain packed with vehicles.
Over the past decade, India has invested hundreds of crores of rupees in MLCPs under the Smart Cities Mission, AMRUT and municipal budgets. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), for example, operates about 30 MLCPs and has proposed nine more at a cost of Rs 9 crore. ₹775 crore, adding over 4,400 spaces and increasing the total capacity by 40% to approximately 15,157 vehicles.
Similarly, Ahmedabad, Bhopal and Chandigarh have built many such facilities, which often cost ₹50- ₹100 crores each. Yet most of them are of little use. Occupancy at many Delhi facilities is 30-40%, Bengaluru averages around 30%, and Pune, Chennai, Ahmedabad and other cities have reported similarly low utilisation. Meanwhile, free on-street parking continues to dominate, consuming about 14% of Delhi’s road space and more than 40% in many other cities, according to a study by the Center for Science and Environment (CSE).
This is India’s parking paradox – massive public investment in multi-level parking facilities has weakened the very roads they were supposed to decongest.
supply without strategy
Shreya Gadepalli, lead author of Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation’s 2024 Roadmap for Parking Reform in Indian Cities, says the current approach is fundamentally flawed. She says, “Both aspects are about supplying more parking. One is the government building multi-level car parks, and the other is forcing every new commercial and residential building to provide minimum parking through development control regulations.” “But the world has moved in the opposite direction. Many cities have replaced parking minimums with parking maximums, especially near public transit hubs. Instead of saying ‘You must create at least this much parking,’ they say ‘You can’t create more than this much.'”
His view echoes the work of American urban planning economist Donald Shoop, whose influential theory argues that low-price or free parking encourages excessive driving, congestion, and inefficient land use. When parking is treated as a free public good, demand becomes artificially high and cities end up oversupplying it. His solutions – fair pricing of on-street parking and removal of minimum parking requirements – have shaped policy in many cities around the world.
Architect and urban expert Dikshu Kukreja says minimum parking norms only create distortions rather than actual demand satisfaction. “They force developers to build parking without regard to actual demand, locking up valuable land and capital in a use that may not always be appropriate,” he says. “At the same time, public MLCPs are underutilized as on-street parking remains informally available, affordable, and far more convenient.”
The Jamia study, led by Abdul Ahad and Farhan Ahmed Kidwai, also found that proximity significantly moderates behavior: for example, 90% of drivers said they would not drive more than 250 meters from their destination. This leads to high demand for roadside spots and drive cruising – the practice of circling blocks looking for a spot – and illegal parking. Twelve percent of respondents admitted to double-parking or occupying non-designated areas, further reducing road capacity.
Experts say the deeper issue is the systemic subsidy given to car owners at the expense of public space, equity and sustainability. According to the Shakti Foundation, creating one space in a public multi-level car park costs approximately ₹10 Lakh (except land) – approximately the same as for building an affordable housing unit. Yet free or very low-cost on-street parking takes up a lot of street space, while these expensive MLCPs are rarely used.
Surat’s research, part of the same Shakti Foundation study, comes up with a counter-intuitive finding. “We found that people were willing to pay much more than the city would expect,” says Gadepalli. “Currently, cars are charged only ₹10 per hour and two wheeler ₹5 per hour. Yet nearly 90% of those surveyed said they would pay ₹20 per hour for cars and ₹If two-wheelers get hassle-free parking, then Rs 10 will be charged for them. Higher pricing in high-demand areas means that those willing to pay will definitely find a place,” she adds.
It’s not just the metro that’s the problem.
Tarun Sharma, co-founder of Nagarikaa, an independent research organization focused on small and medium-sized cities in India, says the parking problem is not limited to metros. He points out that MLCP occupancy in Sector-17, Chandigarh is around 22%; In Bhopal’s MP Nagar, a minimum of 17% for four-wheelers.
“You can’t think that just increasing supply will create demand,” says Sharma. Multilevel car parking cannot be done in isolation. You can’t just pick a location and decide to build a facility there. The location will have to be selected carefully and meet the actual demand.”
OP Aggarwal, transport expert and lead author of the National Urban Transport Policy 2006, agrees. “These multi-level parking facilities have not been thought out. What is driving them is a pure civil engineering mentality that focuses only on construction,” he says. “On-street parking should be allowed only for short periods and made too expensive for longer stays. A proper demand study should be conducted before building a multi-level parking facility. It is more likely to be successful in areas where people need to park for longer periods, such as office districts.”
Safety and security concerns – poor lighting, absent or rude attendants, and waterlogging – also limit the use of MLCPs. For example, in Bhopal traders avoid many MLCPs due to fear of theft. In Pune, the PMC-run multi-level parking lot at Narayan Peth has become a clear example of how poorly managed facilities can be misused. Last year, the police raided the premises and busted an illegal gambling den running inside the parking area, arresting 33 people. Cash, mobile phones and gambling paraphernalia worth approximately ₹5 lakhs were seized. The same facility has been repeatedly used as a dumping ground for abandoned and unidentified vehicles, raising serious concerns about safety, inspection and maintenance.
“The experience of multi-level parking spaces makes a lot of sense,” says Sharma. “Building retail on the ground floor can activate these amenities and make them more attractive and safe.”
From an urban planning perspective, the failure of multi-level parking facilities reflects a deep flaw in planning Indian cities. “These multi-storey parking structures reflect a gross lack of planning and a dismal vision of the future,” says Jagan Shah, urban expert and former director of the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). “They are ugly, in poor condition, and fail to reduce on-street parking, which is their purpose. Instead of enabling demand-side management, better mobility, and the protection of public space, they undermine the quality of urban life. Yet such projects persist even as we invest billions in rail and bus systems.”
the way forward
In cities such as London, Amsterdam and Zurich, and in parts of Germany, the United States and South America, governments now limit how much parking can be built, especially near public transport. Free on-street parking has been largely eliminated, and the price of street parking is deliberately kept much higher than off-street options.
Paris has gone one step further. Since the pandemic, the city has removed thousands of on-street parking spaces, converting them into protected bicycle lanes, wider sidewalks and green spaces. “Whether it’s Paris or Budapest, they have created an urban mobility fund. All the money raised from expensive on-street parking goes into that fund and is used to increase the number of buses,” says Gadepalli.
Some cities in India have now started taking corrective measures. For example, Bhubaneswar has banned on-street parking near its major MLCP and is aggressively deploying towing fleets to enforce the rule. Bengaluru’s Parking Policy 2.0 aims to eliminate or significantly increase on-street parking prices in high-density areas with under-utilized multi-level facilities.
Coimbatore is fixing the maintenance problem. Its RS Puram MLCP, commissioned in 2022 at a cost of more than ₹This Rs 40 crore hydraulic lift with a capacity of 380 cars remained closed for almost three years due to frequent breakdowns. After major renovations, the two floors were partially commissioned in December 2025. Municipal Corporation Commissioner M Sivaguru Prabhakaran says, “There were engineering and maintenance issues which have now been rectified. We have asked the police to strictly enforce fines against illegal parking on the road in the busy commercial area.” He says occupancy has increased to about 70% in the last four months.
The power study recommends removing parking from real estate and moving it from minimums to maximums near transit hubs and corridors. “These changes are both practical and necessary,” says Kukreja. “Moving to calibrated maximums allows developments to respond to actual mobility patterns rather than outdated notions of universal car ownership. Unbundling introduces cost transparency as buyers and tenants are no longer forced to pay for parking they don’t need, making housing more equitable and potentially cheaper. For planners, this flexibility means less vehicles. People and open spaces have to be prioritized over mechanical accommodation,” he further said.
He says integrating multi-level parking facilities with metro stations can make parking part of a seamless journey rather than a detour.
