Murder in the Parking Lot

In April, an auto-rickshaw driver who had parked the three-wheeler outside his sister’s house in East Delhi had no clue how doomed this visit would prove to be. A neighbour who wanted to park at the same spot demanded that he move the vehicle. Things soon spiraled out of control and the brawl ended with the visitor getting stabbed. He bled to death.

Such murders at parking lots have become something of a Delhi specialty. It is perhaps the only city in India where the city pages regularly publish stories about people attacking each other over who gets to park at a particular spot.

“Do not park here...tyres will be deflated:” this simple and direct warning is found pasted on signboards outside most Delhi middle-class localities.

A simple Google search shows that Delhi has accounted for at least three murders in the last six months that happened on account of parking space. There have been several instances of people attacking each other over the same cause. In some cases, they merely punched each other while in other instances baseball bats, bricks and iron bars were employed. Such crimes have been registered at police stations in affluent colonies as well as areas inhabited by the lower middle-class.

But who is to blame for this mess? The one definitive factor is rage, a human weakness that is seen on display everyday in the capital. Road rage is a feature of daily life in Delhi.

However, there is more to these killings than just a short fuse.

Delhi has the highest automobile density in the country. According to the Economic Survey of Delhi, the city has 85 private cars per 1000 population. Overall, car penetration in India, however, continues to remain low at 8 cars per 1000 population. This means that car density in Delhi is more than 10 times the national average. Naturally, this also means that parking would become a problem.

There has been an exponential growth in the number of vehicles, which increased from 30.33 lakh in 1997-98 to 56.27 lakh in 2007-08 at an annual compound growth rate of 6.42%. Decennial growth rate is substantially higher in case of private vehicles (92.53%) as compared to commercial vehicles (13.41%).

Interestingly, in the category of private vehicles, cars and SUVs have registered a decennial growth rate of 126.14%, which is highest among all the categories of vehicles followed by two-wheelers (i.e. scooter, motorcycle & moped) with 79.62%.

In the commercial category of vehicles, taxi cabs, have registered the highest decennial growth rate (82.35%) followed by buses including light, medium and heavy passenger vehicles (43.75%). Auto rickshaws have registered a negative decennial growth rate of (-) 6.25%.

The data clearly establishes that it is the private car owners who have contributed to the traffic jams in the city more than any other section of the society. This is despite the fact that Delhi is perhaps the only city which has one of the most extensively routed Metro network.

Of late, the Delhi government has opened two automated multi-level parking lots that can handle over a thousand cars each at a time. These parking lots were constructed under public private partnership agreements between builders and the state government. But given that Delhi registers over a thousand vehicles everyday, it is difficult to imagine that these facilities alone would solve the problem.

Perhaps, the state government needs to take steps to discourage private transport by imposing substantial levies in terms of parking fees. It also needs to ensure that the Metro has adequate feeder services. Perhaps it is also time to experiment seriously with dedicated cycling lanes. Although this feature is available on some roads in Delhi, the government needs to take concerted efforts to encourage cycling.

An editorial that appeared in The Hindu recently, noted that cities across the world are rediscovering bicycles. “At the heart of this turnaround story is the widely popular Velib bicycle sharing system in Paris. Its success has been infectious: Montreal, Bogota, Hanghzou and many other cities have embraced cycling. Velib completed its fifth anniversary recently and its impressive journey offers an opportunity to reflect on the state of Indian cities. Public cycle sharing systems have been in existence in Europe since 1965, but its scale, design and convenience make the Paris system stand apart. As a result, more than 300,000 trips are made every day using cycles with an average speed of 15 km an hour — better than the speed of crawling cars on choked Indian roads.

Lancet published a study last week that showed cycling increased 50% in two decades in Denmark after it improved cycling infrastructure.

The world today, as the mayor of a French city observed, is divided into two: cities that have bicycle networks and others who want it. Where does that leave Indian cities? They belong to a third category: directionless.”

Meanwhile, this latest report suggests road rage continues to grip Delhi.

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.