At Rs. 10 per hour, Connaught Place gets its first multi-level parking lot

Connaught Place on Tuesday got its first automatic multi-level parking that will provide space for 1,408 cars, easing congestion in the business district of the Capital. The parking located at Baba Kharak Singh Marg will charge R10 per hour per car.

Connaught Place on Tuesday got its first automatic multi-level parking that will provide space for 1,408 cars, easing congestion in the business district of the Capital. The parking located at Baba Kharak Singh Marg will charge Rs. 10 per hour per car.

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To encourage people to actually use the facility, chief minister Sheila Dikshit asked the nodal agency New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) to start a shuttle service immediately between the parking lot and the market.

"The NDMC should provide free travel services so that commuters do not have to walk all the way to CP," Dikshit said.

While cars took longer than the touted three minutes to be retrieved, home minister P Chidambaram said whenever new technology is introduced, there is a period of 'trial and error'.

"We must factor the trial and error aspect of the technologies and be proud of the fact that Indian engineers and companies have designed and implemented the projects," Chidambaram said.

Referring to the glitches being reported at a similar automatic multi-level parking at Sarojini Nagar market, the Home Minister added that the systems are constantly
improving.

"When the Sarojini Nagar parking was started, retrieval time of cars was 10 minutes as opposed to the hyped 3 minutes. However through continuous trials, it has been reduced to 4-5 minutes in recent times and the retrieval time will go down further in days to come," he said.

Named 'Capitol Point', the project at BKS Marg has been built by DLF on BoT basis. The system functions like a Rubik's Cube, where through a continuous space shift, parking and fetching a car can be realised through pallets. The pallets move forward, backward, left and right to allow the cars to be moved towards the lift for retrieval.

Officials say automated car park facility require less building volume and ground space, as compared to conventional parking lots. The first two floors will be rented out for commercial usage.