Plan to ease parking woes

Plan to ease parking woes
Kate Newton and Manisha Kumar, Bangalore, DH News Service:
Parking Information System, put forth by the Association responsible for initiating country's first automatic parking system, aims at displaying the occupancy status of the parking lot.

Brigade Shops and Establishments Association has proposed an innovative parking system to ease traffic congestion and optimum utilisation of limited parking space on Brigade Road.

Parking Information System (PIS), put forth by the Association responsible for initiating country’s first automatic parking system, aims at displaying the occupancy status of the parking lot. The system comprises four digital boards, one positioned at the entrance and three dotting the street. Each bay will be fitted with a sensor and all of them will be connected to the Central Display System. When a vehicle is parked inside a bay, the sensor will be covered. When it moves out, the sensor stands exposed and the display board shows it to be an empty bay.

When all bays are occupied, Full Parking sign will be displayed.


With 1,600 cars scanning for space through 85 bays, the proposed PIS assumes urgency, according to the president of the Association, Suhail Yussuf.

Yussuf has dispatched two letters to Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike seeking permission to implement this Rs 49 lakh project. “Once the clearance is given, the system could be installed within 30 days,” he said. Yussuf has also sought permission to extend the successful automated parking system on Brigade Road to 37 other roads in the City.

The Association decided to take steps to redress the parking problem since nobody else will, the president claimed. “Bangalore has been messed up by the people who are managing it. They have not bothered to solve a single problem," he alleged.

Expressing optimism about feasibility, garment export house worker, Doman Tudu said the system might improve the traffic flow on the street. “When someone enters the road, he can easily identify the vacant lot. It reduces searching time. It could work.”

However, the shoppers are sceptical about the feasibility of the project. Expressing doubts about the working of the system, they felt that traffic would still prevail by waiting for cars reversing out of parking bays. It is their opinion that parking should not be allowed on Brigade Road. Pruteik Asija, a regular to the road, concurs with the view. “The parking needs to be in some other place as the road is already too narrow,” he feels.