BMC’s smart parking app to revolutionise parking in Mumbai

Apart from making it easy to locate and book parking spaces in Mumbai the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations BMC smart parking application is aimed at streamlining maintenance of public parking lots and onstreet parking lots by clubbing app development and app maintenance with maintenance of the property itself Currently around 500 parking lots across the city have been linked to the tender floated for creation of the new appAll under one roofThe contractor will be responsible for developing the app maintaining financial books of receipts from all parking lots and maintaining the parking lots as well If all goes according to plan with time all parking lots across the city will be brought under the maintenance of one agency The date for submitting bids has been extended by 15 days on Friday October 30 to November 14 At present the onstreet and public parking lots are contracted to different agencies by the civic body for operation and maintenance The civic body receives a fixed amount as feesWhat app will bringMotorists will be able to locate parking lots across the city prebook parking spaces and also pay for parking through the app Every public parking lot is expected to display the number of vacant parking slots on its premises at the entry point The app will instead track available parking slots in real time ldquoThe decision to integrate app development and app maintenance with the maintenance of the property was taken to streamline financial arrangements As motorists can pay through the application it will be easier for the same contractor to maintain the parking lots as well as the mobile application The BMC will receive a share of the revenue generated from the operations instead of a fixed amountrsquo said a senior civic official This will also facilitate more transparency for BMC ldquoAt present motorists pay on the spot and we are not entirely aware of what is happening at the locationrdquo the official addedIntegration of spacesThe BMC has also planned to integrate private parking spaces such as in malls with the mobile application to increase the number of available parking lots in Mumbai In 201920 the then Mumbai Parking Authority mdash the apex body formed as part of BMC to streamline parking management in the city mdash had planned to tie up with housing societies malls bus depots and other commercial spaces to make their vacant parking spaces available to the public However the idea did not sustainPublic parking lot statusThere are 58 public parking lots across the city middayrsquos status check of a few of these in July had revealed several issues includinggtgt A lack of proper signage boards at entrances to indicate presence of parkinggtgt Poor accessibility as most entrances are tucked away on interior roads far from the arterial roads frequented by tourists shoppers and officegoersgtgt Inadequate lighting which discourages families and women from using the parking lotsgtgt Unfriendly pedestrian infrastructure in the surrounding areasThese parking lots have an occupancy rate of just 40 per cent to 60 per cent amid largescale illegal onstreet parking across the cityKey features of the appgtgt Tracking of available parking spaces location of parking lotsgtgt Booking of parking space onlinegtgt Payment of parking fee online