SDMC to launch parking application, give real-time info on slot availability

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) will launch a mobile application to provide real-time into on parking slots across the lots that it operate. It will also push for digital payments, instead of cash. SDMC officials said the app may be launched this week during Navratras

South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) will soon launch its new parking application which is expected to encourage digital payments and facilitate access to information regarding parking slots availability.

The South Delhi Municipal Corporation’s multilevel parking lot in Sarojini Nagar. SDMC is coming up with a mobile application to facilitate digital payments of parking charges and provide real-time info on slots availability across the lots operated by it. (HT Photo)

A senior official overseeing the project stated that the beta version of the mobile app is being tested, and it may be launched this week during the Navratras. “We will link all the 153 parking facilities being operated by the municipal corporation with this application and the geo-tagging of the parking slots is being carried out. Users will be able to see in real-time the availability of parking slots. Since the parking time and charges will be calculated digitally, we will be able to weed out any possibility of malpractices,” the official said.

Of the five local bodies in Delhi, only New Delhi Municipal Council currently operates a parking management application. The south corporation operates 145 surface parking sites and 8 multilevel parking sites --6 underground multilevel parking sites and 2 tower parking systems.

The SDMC official said they were currently managing around 25,000 parking slots across 104 municipal wards. “We will discourage use of paper slips and they will be provided only in cases where users demand it. In the second phase, there is also a proposal to link the mobile application with Delhi Traffic Police and Vahan digital database of vehicles managed by the ministry of road transports and highways. The application will enable us to issue challans to vehicles parked in no-parking zones,” the official explained.

The New Delhi Municipal Council uses a sensor-based system to assess the parking slot availability, the south body is going to use geo-tagging-based system. “The sensor-based system to check the availability of each slot would have been too expensive. In our system, we will enable users to link the mobile phones with the registered vehicles. The new system will benefit both users and the civic body as we will be able to plug any revenue loss at the contractor level with more transparency,” the official stated.

On September 30, the civic body operationalised its first RFID-based parking lot in Dwarka Sector-14 with the help of NHAI.

Official said that these two IT based projects will help the corporation in getting better understanding of parking demand-supply and patterns of usage at particular locations.

Inderjeet Sehrawat, leader of the house in SDMC, said the new application will benefit the users in terms of more transparency and access to real time parking availability. “NDMC is already using similar system which will be made available online in the south corporation’s parking lots,” he added.