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4 months on, Chandigarh MC’s smart parking project yet to gain pace
Chandigarh MC took over the city’s parking lots in January after contracts of private contractors got over, but has failed to introduce smart parking features
It has been over four months since the municipal corporation (MC) took over the operations of city’s parking lots after expiry of three-year agreements with private contractors, but the civic body is yet to initiate work to turn them into smart parking lots.
In August last year, a plan to introduce a FASTag-enabled parking management system at the 89 parking lots in Chandigarh was conceived, but the project proposal has not even been tabled in the MC General House.
As per the proposal, the new parking system will also include a mobile app for booking parking slots, separate parking for two-wheelers, proper demarcated parking slots, dynamic pricing and parking availability status, to be managed by the central control centre.
Besides this, the civic body has not even initiated the process to hire another private firm to operate the parking lots even when the revenue of the civic body has dipped over half since February this year.
Parking lots in the city are divided into two zones. Zone 1 comprises parking lots in the southern and eastern sectors, including Sectors 20, 26 and 34. Zone 2 includes northern areas, such as Sectors 7, 8, 9, 17, 22 and Sukhna Lake.
In 2020, MC had auctioned and allotted both zones to private contractors for three years for around ₹10 crore annually. Zone 1 was managed by contractor Ram Sunder, while the second was managed by Paschatya Entertainment that was found to have defaulted on licence fee worth ₹6.5 crore. While the former's contract got over on January 23, the latter’s was to expire on January 31.
It was then decided in the January 30 House meeting that the contracts not be extended and all parking lots be taken over and run by MC. MC eventually initiated legal proceedings against Paschatya for defrauding MC of crores by providing fake bank sureties.
The civic body started operating 73 out of the 89 parking lots on February 21, after arranging requisite manpower and POS machines from private banks. From January 30 to February 20, the parking lots were running without any charge for visitors. The parking rates remained the same since MC took over — ₹7 for two-wheelers and ₹14 for four-wheelers.
However, officials, in the May House meeting, said the civic body was facing revenue losses as they had no professional expertise in managing parking lots and that the working of its B&R department was being affected due to deployment of its staff at parking lots.
“MC will table the smart parking agenda in the upcoming House Meeting for approval. The tender can be floated only after the rates of smart parking are finalised by the House,” said Anindita Mitra, MC commissioner.
RITES pointed out need for major improvements
In April 2022, after its survey of city’s parking system, RITES (Rail India Technical and Economic Service) had listed several problems with it.
It had pointed out that there was no real-time tracking or data/report for analysis of the parking lots. Commuters waste considerable time in searching for a vacant parking spot, which causes traffic congestion, further leading to stress on users and pollution.
Highlighting sub-optimal utilisation of space, RITES had also pointed out lack of flexibility in parking charges. Among its various suggestions was introduction of an easy payment mechanism.
