Parking at Indian Malls:
Customer Woes

chillibreeze writer — Maheshwari Rajneesh

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It should be an easy job to park one's vehicle at Indian shopping malls and get the goods and services done for the money we pay. For life can never be that simple, can it? A thought shared by many people after their exasperating experiences in getting their vehicles parked in the parking area provided by shopping malls.

Shopping malls in India are gaining importance day by day not only as a place for shopping but also for the myriad entertainment facilities they offer. However, the downside is that customers become a harassed lot as they increasingly find it difficult to find a single car parking space in the parking spaces provided by these malls. Meanwhile, they are totally exhausted while searching for parking. At times, quarrels emerge between two motorists and this totally spoils the mood of shopping.

In order to avoid these bad experiences, shoppers are forced to park their vehicles outside malls, which in turn leads to heavy traffic jams in that particular area, with the added worry of theft. Then again there is another problem. The people who reside near these malls suffer a lot as their roads turn into parking lots. And during weekends, shoppers park their vehicles in front of residential houses and make it impossible for people to go for a simple outing. It's a tedious job to trace the owner of the vehicle too. Yet another category of customers decide to take an auto rickshaw or call taxis instead of just wasting their precious hours of shopping by parking their vehicles in the malls. This has led to the increasing popularity of call-taxis.

As a new custom, motorists are charged for parking their vehicles in parking areas. These parking charges range from Rs.20 to Rs.70 at shopping malls. In addition to this, the parking attendants declare that they are not responsible for any damages to the vehicle. Then what is the purpose of collecting parking charges? This has been an unanswered question.

The promoters or developers of shopping malls spend their time, money and efforts to cater to the needs of shopkeepers, but they hardly ever focus on how to cater to the millions of customers who will be visiting these malls. The major cause of parking woes in our nation is because of poor planning by developers. And, moreover, even if developers are willing to provide more parking spaces, they are trapped by FSI (Floor Space Index) restrictions. Free FSI has been made available to developers in several nations which has turned out to be successful.

The State governments, local Municipal Corporation, private builders and architects are under immense pressure to think about innovative ideas to put a full stop to these parking woes.

The solution is to implement Multilevel Car Parking Technology which will maximize car parking spaces available on the ground. It can either be fully automatic or semi-automatic system. As per the Semi-automatic car parking system, one can acquire two car parking spaces, one above the other. The Fully automated car parking system requires careful planning as per the dimensions of various cars and their heights. It has been customized focusing on the traffic flow and maximum capacity utilization within the space. This Multilevel Car Parking technology is considered to be safe and cost efficient and ensures easy handling of few thousand cars at a single site. Thus, the upcoming shopping malls must plan ahead to solve this problem. And as for us shoppers, let's hope for the best.

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—About our writer: Maheshwari writes for chillibreeze.

 

 

 

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