Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore   

Parking meters on Brigade Road soon

By Afshan Yasmeen

BANGALORE Sept. 23. Electronic parking meters are to be installed on Brigade Road when the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) awards new parking contracts from October 1.

According to the BMP Deputy Commissioner (Development), K.R. Niranjan, the parking meters, which are being imported from Malaysia, will discourage motorists from leaving their vehicles in a parking lot for hours. There will be one meter for every 10 vehicles. The Rs. 50-lakh pilot project will be sponsored by the Brigade Road Shops and Establishments Association (BRSEA). If the pilot project is successful, meters will be installed in other areas, Mr. Niranjan says.

How it works

After a motorist has parked his vehicle on Brigade Road, he will enter its registration number in one of the parking meters. After entering the number, he will choose one of the four time slots — 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, or 120 minutes — and insert coins. If he is not able to take away his vehicle within the period for which he has taken a ticket, he will have to pay more.

In the first year, the BMP and the BRSEA will share the revenue equally.

New contract tenders have been called, and they will be finalised by September 25. The Sainik Welfare Society will monitor the new system on a regular basis.

The tenders include enhanced penalty clauses, and the number of roads under the "pay and park" system has been increased to 100 from 95, Mr. Niranjam says. The old contracts under the system expired on June 30 but the system is being continued under the supervision of BMP officials.

The BMP could not extend the old contracts as the contractors complained of low returns, Mr. Niranjan says. But "when parking contractors realised that the BMP could run the system without them, they came back to us," and the BMP allowed them to continue from mid-August on an ad hoc basis at old rates, he adds. When the BMP took over the system from contractors, there was a "negligible" loss in revenue in the first week of July, when collections decreased from Rs. 90,000 to Rs. 60,000. But the collections went up again.

Under the old parking contracts, the BMP was collecting parking fee on 78 busy roads in three categories of A, B, and C. It earned over Rs. 3 crore annually from parking fee in the `A' category, including the major commercial hub of Central Bangalore. Last year, the total revenue from parking fee was Rs. 5 crore.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Southern States

News: Front Page | National | Southern States | Other States | International | Opinion | Business | Sport | Miscellaneous |
Advts: Classifieds | Employment | Obituary |

Stories in this Section

• Parking meters on Brigade Road soon
• Major fire at electronic goods factory
• Firms pulled up for worker's negligence
• Road accidents claimed 27 lives in one week
• Use of headlights banned on many roads

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu