Pay as you use: BBMP to introduce paid-parking in 56 roads

BENGALURU: The city civic body BBMP will open 56 roads within five kilometre radius of the Vidhana Soudha for paid parking by October. The authorities will open technical bids on September 8 and take up financial bids later.

This is just the first phase, and the civic body plans to extend it to another 150 roads. The municipal authorities will award all the 56 roads to a single operator which can be a single firm or a consortium of up to four firms. "This will not only be a good source of revenue for BBMP but will also help us regulate traffic," BBMP Administrator TM Vijay Bhaskar told ET.

The new parking system will require the nod from the new BBMP council and the authorities don't anticipate any trouble.

The authorities have divided the roads in the central business district (CBD) into A, B and C zones and the new parking system will be technology-driven. "We have laid down the technology requirements such as monitoring systems, swiping facilities, closed circuit TV system and parking meters. The successful bidder will invest in technology with no costs to us," BBMP Executive Engineer (traf fic engineering cell) Basavaraj Kabade told ET. "There is no manual intervention at all and the parking picture can be viewed remotely by us. We will have all data at our command," he added.

The Directorate of Urban Land Transport, led by IT Secretary V Manjula, designed the new parking system for BBMP.

The civic body has decided to award all the 56 roads to a single operator to prevent any local parking mafias from coming up around single roads. The authorities estimate that the major roads in core Bengaluru area (within ring road limits) have the poten tial to earn about Rs 500 crore in parking fee.

Some of the roads that the first phase will cover include Church Street, Brigade Road, MG Road, Road, MG Road, Seshadri Road, Commercial Street, Race Course Road, Infantry Road, Ali Askar Road, Palace Road, and KG Road. The BBMP has fixed an hourly parking fee of Rs 30 in zone A, Rs 20 in zone B and Rs 15 in zone C for cars and a lower rate for two wheelers.

BJP MLA (Jayanagar) BN Vijay Kumar said his party was not against the municipal body collecting parking fee, and wanted it to focus on creating parking infrastructure. "We also want the authorities to build multilevel car parking facilities on all major roads and fully open up those already built only for public car parking," he said.