Bhubaneswar, April 10: Booking a table at your favourite restaurant is passé. Get ready to pre-book parking space for cars and two-wheelers using a mobile app.
Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) is going to make it possible for you to do just that with a mobile phone application that will be launched for smooth management of parking facilities here.
BSCL, the special purpose vehicle of the smart city projects, has decided to introduce the Smart Parking app, using which people can pre-book parking space at any designated parking lot of the municipal corporation and also make hassle-free cashless payments.
"We have decided to develop this application for the citizens. The mobile application would not only help citizens but also officials to track and monitor irregularities in the parking lots. It will help in the smooth management of the parking services in the city," said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.
According to the plan, the mobile application will be regulated with a geo informatics system (GIS) module. It will have a map with legends identifying parking lots along with capacity and current availability. Officials said the parking lots operated by the municipal corporation and private contractors would be integrated in the mobile application.
"Availability of parking space and collection of parking charges would be monitored and maintained from the city command control centre that will be set up under the smart city project. The mobile application would help in the smooth and safe management of the parking lots," said an official of the smart city project.
The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation now has 76 authorised parking lots of which 41 are managed through private operators. While 29 are managed by the civic body, the remaining six are institutional parking. The city will also have two multi-level parking facilities at Saheed Nagar and Unit-II under the smart city project.
In recent times, the civic body has received a lot of flak for irregularities in the parking lots, increasing hooliganism of fake parking operators, harassment of citizens by parking lot operators and collection of additional charges from the users. Earlier this month, the civic body had got four fake parking lot operators from Ashok Nagar arrested.
"It is often difficult to differentiate the legal parking fee collectors from the fake ones. You park your vehicle anywhere and a man will come up and ask for parking fees. Some give you a receipt and charge money according to the fixed price while others don't. There is an urgent need to streamline this service," said Ankit Parida, a resident of Bapuji Nagar.
