Mumbai: Soon, smart parking with find and book app

Kalpesh Mhamunkar

Mumbai: Do you ever drive around in circles trying to look for a parking space in the city? Better late than never, the BMC is developing an application to find vacant parking slots while sitting in the car or at home.

The civic body is also planning to create parking lots on the MMRDA, MHADA and state government plots for wide usage. It also wants to introduce smart parking management strategies to handle the process. 

Additional Municipal Commissioner (Projects) P Vlarasu said, “All information on parking is localised and not known to others. We want to bring it on a single platform to help fix uniform rates. With this, people will also know the availability of parking online.”

He said motorists can also book slots and pay online, which will reduce interference at the parking sites. “We want parking to be more technology oriented with this ‘Find my parking’-like app. Requests for proposal documents of this software are almost ready,” Mr Velrasu said.

The BMC will also invite tenders to manage and run these parking sites, where CCTVs will be installed. The BMC will also get an hourly database of how many vehicles were parked in a day, average duration of parking, which will further help the civic body analyse the process. 

With very few parking spaces, Mumbai is also a victim to indiscriminate parking, which creates traffic jams. There are 32 pay and parking lots of the BMC and are operated at a local level. 

The civic body has also decided the lowest parking pricing policy be implemented in wards. This means yellow plate vehicles such as autos and taxis and tourist cars will be charged at a subsidised rate.