Mumbai: BMC floats tender to automate car parking

The BMC  had constituted a panel of experts more than four years ago to solve the traffic woes of the city. It is now planning to implement one of the recommended solutions by creating a parking interface for Mumbai. Accordingly, the civic body has floated a tender to create an automated parking system under the proposed Mumbai Parking Authority (MPA).

The tender, with an estimated cost of Rs38 crore, is for selection of a system integrator for the design, development, implementation, operation and maintenance of a sensor-based, automated parking, guidance and management system, complete with a camera and digital payment system with video analytics. The software implementation will be done in phases. Phase-I would include off-street parking, which would cover 32 locations as public parking lots, 29 locations as category ‘A* parking lots and 65 existing locations for on-street parking. Additionally, there are 530 proposed locations in four civic wards that include 263 general pay and park locations and 267 residential pay and park locations.

According to the official, there will be a pre-booking facility available only for off-street parking through the mobile/web application for a window of two hours. Notifications shall be sent to the user 15 minutes prior to the end of duration. However, no pre-booking facility will be available for on street parking. Instead, a list of locations with their slot availability shall be visible to the user once in a 200-metre radius of the facility.

The BMC parking management software which will include a slot occupancy visualisation module and a payment application. It will also integrate all the relevant databases from Parivahan, Saarthi, E- challan, Mumbai Traffic Police and Mumbai parking pool organisations, among others. The contract awarded will be for six years, including one year for implementation and five years of maintenance."It is a big intervention where all the available parking lots of BMC and government organisations like the MMRDA and Port Trust, road side parking and also private housing society parking made available for citizens will be brought under a single software interface," said P Velrasu, Additional Municipal Commissioner (Projects).

According to Velrasu, this will be a game changer as the public will be able to obtain comprehensive round-the-clock information about all parking lots available across Mumbai on their mobile devices. "This is like overseas practices, wherein you can book your parking slot before you reach your destination. All payments can also be made online without much human intervention," he said.