Pay & display parking system for Bengaluru

Interview with Praveen Sood, Addl CP, Traffic Police

Are you being strict about parking violations also?

 Parking spaces in Bengaluru for vehicles is not even 10,000 to 20,000. Where are the parking lots? Maybe 10,000-20,000 vehicles are parked in parking lots. Another couple of lakhs maybe parked in places without obstructing traffic. But lakhs of vehicles are parked in places where it obstructs traffic. You can't tow lakhs of vehicles. We only monitor the arterial roads. We don't do parking enforcement in residential areas and streets.

Towing one vehicle takes half an hour. In a day, a vehicle can tow 20-25 vehicles. You can't tow lakhs of vehicles. Towing is done just to give a flavour to people that this (illegal parking) is wrong. We do parking enforcement in main roads; that too not to the full extend, it's not possible.

But it may not be fair to the motorists as there are not enough parking spaces.

But that is not my problem. Our mandate is to keep the traffic moving, so we will tow vehicles away. So people can't argue that ‘give me the parking space'. When you bought the car, you didn't ask me. So we are not there to give any parking space, BBMP does.

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We are in multi authority mode for this. Creation of parking spaces (marking out the lots and making the parking lanes) & installing the meters needs to be done by BBMP. Enforcement is currently done by traffic police. Need to have a meeting with Praveen Sood to find out the ideal model for making the creation & enforcement work together. Need to confirm, but currently all fines including parking collected by police go to the state govt coffers not to the traffic police directly.  

How do we display these printed reciepts on 2 wheelers?

Here is one example: Once you have paid for your parking, the usual procedure is to display the ticket on the dashboard of your vehicles as proof of payment for the space. To assist motorcycle and scooter riders in displaying the ticket, the City of Ottawa has created a courtesy Motorcycle and Scooter Tag, which allows you to secure the ticket to the motorcycle or scooter handlebars. You do not have to use the Motorcycle and Scooter Tag – it is offered as an alternate way to display your ticket.

Another from Chicago: The license plate of the motorcycle or scooter must be written on the receipt. This deters others from stealing or using the receipt. Further, it is unlawful for any vehicle to display a receipt bearing another’s license plate number. Violators may be fined. Follow the directions on the receipt. The receipt has an adhesive backing. This backing should be removed and used to post the receipt to the head lamp of the motorcycle or scooter. Make sure to apply the adhesive and the receipt to a dry and clean surface. To ensure proper display and to avoid a ticket, please be certain to wipe the headlamp off prior to posting if it is dirty or wet.

One more solution: has been implemented by Birmingham City Council, who provide a secure box into which motorcyclists post their Pay and Display ticket, having written their registration number on it.

Read here a very good writeup on addressing 2 wheeler parking and the challenges post automation. Plastic sleeves, with the parking meter printing out the license plate number, seems to the best option. Like someone said "I keep a luggage tag in my saddlebag, slide the receipt inside and hang it securely from my handlebar".

Around every RTO office you will find a shop selling plastic sleeves to put your license card into while submitting to RTO, like that a market for luggage tag like displays for parking reciepts will evolve.

 the street /intersection designs, markings, designating appropriate parking areas with proper access

Valid point, I have been looking around to see if an automated parking system needs parking markers on the street. Turns out the only requirement is to indicate the parking start & end zones. This designation can be in the form of whole streets or whole areas. Which means, unlike coin meters which need clear parking markers for each slot, we will be able to implement the pay & display system in our current disorganized system itself.

The pay and display only collects a payment & prints a reciept with or without your license plate number. It only informs the inspector you have paid the city for parking and does not garuntee you a slot nor mention where your vehicle is parked. It assumes you have already parked and you are ready to pay for it. You could even pay in the next street & display the recepit on the vehicle. 

Meanwhile read more and some more on the manual parking loot. BBMP need to revive these 37 roads again. The question is if street specific traders association dont come forward or dont exist what are the options? 

Of course in India there will be a parallel coupon production system.

 By allowing the machine to print at the instant of parking you take the sting out of the counterfeit market. Unless the counterfeit is printed ahead of time and brought to the parking it can be cumbersome to duplicate. If the authorities make it mandatory that the display slip has to come from the closest working machine (whose ID is punched on the ticket) to your parking slot you reduce the chances of getting a preprinted slip made & bought to the location. Any manual system our chaps can beat. Automation is the only way to reduce it.

 The problem with no attendants & just a sprinkling of cops is that people will cheat whole scale,

My experience with the attendants has been because of them I still dont know how to use those machines on brigade road. Whenever I park I look for these guys(mostly because I dont have coins). The only time I tried to use it myself one of the attendants came running with change to help out. If there are attendants you put the human element back who get an opportunity to cheat the system. WIth no attendants you put the entire onus of swindling in the hands of the citizen who can be monitored by the inspector.

I'm not sure 10 dedicated parking inspectors can manage 400 Kms of road 

I have assumed one inspector can cover 4Kms in one hour, it may be optimistic, maybe its lesser kms per inspector. Maybe its 20 inspectors but depends on how much enforcement you want to do? Initially it may be more and move to examples every day. Need to get some data from the cops themselves.

There are definitely resource constraints with the police, so maybe we can look at parking inspectors being from the BBMP and funded by the proceeds of the parking revenue. It has to be a self contained system may be on PPP mode instead of running behind the traders association. The problem with PPP mode is that the same mafia will pick up the contracts & start bypassing the machines. 

Maybe a meeting with both Traffic police & BBMP will throw some light on how they have been pursuing this.

I believe, BBMP made the tender for parking machines for the 37 streets identified in this report. The off street parking facilities are also being built per this report. This report leaves out some nitty gritties we are trying to address in this thread and also need to find out how the practical challenges on the implementation & enforcement side can be ironed out. A parking authority is required as an SPV which is also addressed here. The zones are also addressed adequately. Will form a good baseline report to build on.

 One way to avoid that would be to have an RFID equipped parking pass in combination with a hand-held scanner armed parking cop

Good thought, it would require Active RFID tags and not passive ones, the power requirements for the tag will rely on the range of readability required. With power requirements it may become an onboard unit and not a paper hang-tag anymore. What will be the cost per unit? Who are the vendors? Looks like Singapore & Vietnam have tried out season parking using RFID tags. One advantage the onboard units can double up for cordon congestion pricing.

Should probe this option more for possibilities. It may become easier to communicate with parking machines for payments as well.

Thanks to some groundwork here is something that will validate what we are trying to solve

If you want to get an idea of BBMP’s losses every month, consider this: The Public Utility Building has space for 80 cars and 100 two-wheelers. On the other hand, neighbouring Brigade Road has parking slots for 85 cars and has an automated parking system. It contributes Rs 2.25 lakh revenue to the BBMP every month. But PUB, with more parking slots, has paid less than Rs 25,000 per month for March and April.

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This despite the fact that offstreet parking is easier & less expensive to automate than on-street one. 

We are also planning on introducing monthly passes to vehicle users, which allows them to park vehicles on any street in Bangalore. Passes will be issued by the Palike. Commuters can avoid paying money to people who collect money illegally

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Sounds good, pay & display is the way to go. I wish they graded the pass by zones & issued different colored ones. simplistically the zones can be approximately concentric rings extending outwards from CBD area, with CBD parking being charged more & the outermost ring being charged less. Or you can define zones by parking volume where even if the area (like the IT parks) are on the outer reaches it has higher parking/traffic volume & hence charged like CBD

Alternatively the pass can be prepaid electronic like the metro cards which can be tapped on meters at the end of the street to deduct charge based on the zone.