NDMC to appoint concessionaire to manage, upgrade parking lots

New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has proposed to appoint a concessionaire for a period of 5-7 years for managing and upgrading all parking lots in its areas with sensors and installation of cameras on public-private partnership (PPP) basis.

"It is expected that a concessionaire may be selected through open competition bidding within four months. Thereafter, successful bidder may take another six months' time to put such a system in place," according to the 'Action Taken' by the government on observation made by Standing Committee on Urban Development on Demands for Grants (2016-17) of the Urban Development Ministry.

The report was placed in Parliament today.
 

At present, NDMC is managing parking lots in association with Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System Ltd (DIMTS), a joint venture of Delhi government and IDFC Foundation.

The committee had earlier observed that NDMC, at times, has been adopting a whimsical approach and simply increasing parking charges to exploit the situation rather than coming out with some out-of-the-box solutions to address parking problems in its areas.

According to the report, the government, in its reply, said the proposed system should be capable of uniquely identifying each motorist entering any of the parking lots and the concessionaire may propose barcoded tickets, magnetic strip cards, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and smart cards, among others.

"All revenues generated from parking should be accounted for and tracked. It should be collected online to the maximum extent. Any leakage in the same will not be acceptable," the government said in its reply.

It said keeping future needs in mind, smart parking has been envisaged as one of the project of the smart city proposal of NDMC along with projects of parking for intermediate transport, multi-level automated parking and smart stops.

With the proposed sensor-based parking management system, citizens can get online information about the availability of the parking space, its usage charges and route map on their smart phones.