Bengaluru residents may soon get rid of the illegal parking mafia as Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) is prepared to issue a work order to a bidder in February with the work starting in March.
N Manjunatha Prasad, BBMP Chief, said, “The project has got BBMP council’s approval and the work order will be issued to the bidder in few days. However, BBMP will not be financing for the project. The complete cost will be invested by the bidder who will share Rs 31 crore with BBMP every year. The project will be operational to the public in another three months and it will eradicate the illegal parking mafia from the city.
The first phase of the smart parking project will cover 3,600 cars and 10,000 bikes along 85 roads in the city which is facing a major scarcity of parking space. This will also put an end to the persistent harassment of vehicle users by illegal parking mafia.
BBMP will start smart parking facilities on 85 major roads in the city from September. BBMP has certified two bidders and one bidder will be finalized by the end of next week based on the proportion of revenue the Palike will get from the parking money collection.
It has been assessed that the project will need an investment of Rs 85 crore. Under the project guidelines, maintenance and enforcement will be done by the bidder and BBMP will act as the owner of the project. It will share the revenue collected through the parking fee on a yearly basis.
Smart parking will be supervised through sensors installed along roads which will convert the data into information and communicate it to a monitoring cell. Under the smart parking system, the system will show when a certain spot is ‘occupied’ and the details will be sent electronically to a digital signboard which will display parking status to drivers.
Illegal parking crackdown: With the introduction of smart parking, BBMP also plans to take on illegal parking through fixing drives. Right now, only traffic police would clamp vehicles parked in no-parking zones. However, BBMP officials now say that even they will be allowed to do the same.
