Automated Parking System at City railway station soon

Automated Parking System at City railway station soon
Deccan herald

Waiting in a serpentine queue at the City Railway Station even as the parking attendant ‘makes space’ to squeeze in your vehicle can be exhausting.

Waiting in a serpentine queue at the City Railway Station even as the parking attendant ‘makes space’ to squeeze in your vehicle can be exhausting. But the real test of patience is to take back your vehicle without an argument over overcharging or neglect (scratches on the vehicle, dismantled mirror or a torn seat).

The parking woes at the City Railway Station might be a matter of a month. For, the the Bangalore division of South Western Railway, has already chalked out plans to introduce an Automated Parking System (APS) to channelise the flow of vehicles.

The Main Gate, which has a turnout of 1,000 cars and 500 two-wheelers daily will be the part of the pilot project, which is hoped to instil discipline, facilitate maximum utilisation of available space and most importantly reduce the number of petty quarrels between passengers and parking attendants, say Railway officials. Two months back, the division had started a pilot project of issuing computerised tickets to two-wheelers at the Fisrt entry (Main gate).

The Bangalore city railway station has a total of 6,450 sq m area for parking - at both the First (Main gate) and Second entry (towards Okalipuram underpass). While, the number of two-wheelers and four-wheelers seeking parking is 2,500 daily.

“Proper planning and sprucing up of the parking space can decongest the campus. As a pilot project, we automised the two-wheeler parking at the First entry last month. We are still fine tuning the system. An attendant punches in the vehicle number into a small mobile machine to generate a token. At the exit gate, the card is again inserted into a machine which generates a receipt with the duration of parking and the prescribed parking fee details.

This system has brought in transparency,” explains S Gagarin, senior divisional commercial manager.

“Now, we are calling tenders for the automated parking system for cars again at the Main gate. Dedicated slots for four-wheelers will rule out harassment and malpractices too,” he adds.

The manual parking contractors usually under report the number of vehicles to evade payment to the Railways. But now, the two-wheeler computerised parking is hoped to bring nearly Rs 98 lakh to the Railways over a period of three years, say sources.