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Parking is not merely the allocation of designated spaces; it must be strategically integrated into the city’s mobility framework and urban planning processes. This involves understanding infrastructure and mobility needs, prioritizing walk ability through spatial design, and incorporating advanced technologies to enhance efficiency and functionality. Effective parking management relies on data-driven policies and frameworks, as lessons from various cities highlight the importance of these elements in maintaining efficiency. In an exclusive online discussion organised by Trafficinfratech, parking experts Smit Raturi, CEO & Co-founder – ValetEZ Service Pvt. Ltd, Sachin Kumar, CEO & Executive Director – ParkMont IT & Infra Pvt. Ltd and Ranu Sharma (IPS), ADCP Traffic – Jaipur City, spoke on a range of issues affecting parking on the country. The panel discussion was expertly moderated by C Damodaran, Delivery Head, L&T Technology Services Limited.
My point is a bit different. We should not charge people for parking space; we should create more parking spaces for them and if they do not park there, then definitely enforcement will come into action.
– Ranu Sharma (IPS)
With reports stating that an estimated population of 68% will be moving to cities by 2050, municipal corporations would need to prepare a city development plan that would address the three buckets of rapid transport, pedestrian movement and parking, said Damodaran. Focusing on parking, he said the current practices contribute to urban chaos. With unplanned growth in most cities, there is limited space, cluttering on streets and a lack of multiple parking options. Optimum use of space and making parking a part of the city’s growth culture would be areas the municipal corporations need to focus on, he opined.
Tech has to be brought into play along with discussions with the enforcement agency because we have a vested interest in a certain outcome whereas a government official has a different interest and when both teams sit together and come up with an idea, it is best for the city and its people.
– Smit Raturi
Raturi said public transport and transit would play an important part in solving this problem. In India, a car is still an aspirational buy. With urbanization getting to 70% in a few decades, the parking problem is not going to be solved by just one factor and agencies need to figure out ways to use the existing inventory of parking space. One way would be to have lesser vehicles on the roads. Since ValetEZ is in the business of parking solutions, our interest lies in that whatever comes on the road can actually be parked, he said. Parking cannot be made free and people would need to pay a fee because the parking business has a supply problem. If the vehicle owner does not want to pay, he would use a public transport system like the metro or bus.
We have collaborated with the Municipal Corporation of Ayodhya and implemented RFID-based solutions for four and two wheelers, integrating them with FasTag and stickers that can be recognized by ANPR cameras. I am not seeing any other solution rather than camera-based solution for roadside parking. Innovation is required in this space.
– Sachin Kumar
Kumar’s view was that parking is a convenience to the customer. Looking at it from the user’s perspective, parking should not be a hurdle for the customer or a challenge to the traffic department and the municipal corporation. ParkMont’s agenda is to create convenience so the customer can easily find parking space. While the government cannot make MLCPs at all places and with road-side parking a major challenge, relevant parking space is difficult to find. One needs to leverage technology and an app-based solution that will guide the customer to the nearest available parking slot, he said.
The ethos of every city is different, said Ranu Sharma. Ethos includes personality and behaviour of people and traffic, presence of migrant and floating population, markets and specific settlement designs, among others. Unfortunately, parking is not considered an important aspect when planning a city. There is also no effective monitoring and the ground reality is that there is no authority who actually checks if approved parking spaces are used for other purposes by small stalls or shops, thereby forcing vehicles to park on roads. Speaking as a government official and a service provider, she proposed that rather than punishing people by making them pay parking fees over and above the existing taxes, the agency needs to create parking spaces as the first character of the city, either by way of peripheral or vertical parking.
There are fewer parking problems in a mall because it is well planned right from the development stage, said Damodaran. It is in the unplanned areas of the city, in market areas which get crowded, that are of concern for parking. He sought suggestions on how to gear up the city for the future with urban planning and a mobility vision with sustainability thrown in. Erecting MLCPs, acquiring space from promoters or incentivising people to use public transportation, were some options suggested.
Raturi recommended use of technology to utilize existing space inventory. ValetEZ can predict future parking utilisation in locations wherever the systems are running, based on past records. With the help of systems which are not very centralized and more democratized using hand-held devices, kiosks in the right spots and city-wide plans with cameras which can do automatic slot detection, his company can build the long tail of the inventory – the minor inventory which identifies five parking slots here, ten there etc. and bring them together to create a much larger pool.
Since space is otherwise utilized especially within the CBDs or the CEDs, this small dispersed parking inventory is brought together on a digital platform. “The physical space is turned digital and we are able to show that to the users and say, this is where you are and this is where you can go and park.”
It is easier to do this B2B with commercial buildings and big tech parks. There are multiple places where people can park but the amount of time spent just to find that slot is difficult. ValetEZ was the first to use FasTag as a payment method for parking. It reduced ingress and egress times, which meant that the vehicle spent more time being parked than otherwise. The vehicles enter and exit quickly and it has a huge impact on the traffic outside, reducing congestion. The parking guidance system allows people to find parking much faster, makes for quicker decision-making and speeds up the whole process, he added.
Not all cities are growing in a developed manner. Many have cluttered streets, so how do we make their parking a sustainable solution? What will make one city use an MLCP and how can the municipality think through to make parking a part of the city’s growing culture?
– C Damodaran
ParkMont was working on solutions that did not require human intervention in the parking area, said Kumar. Cashless transactions whether FasTag or UPI-based are implemented in malls but the challenge was in roadside parking. While RFID gun-based solutions are more suitable for roadside parking, the fee cannot get deducted immediately as it is not linked to any cashless facility like FasTag as there is no government approval for such use for open parking. He felt the public needs to be educated that parking is a convenience which has been provided by the city infrastructure and needs to be paid for. Government agencies expect revenue out of parking. Multiple agencies including the traffic department, Municipal Corporation and smart cities groups which are now working in silos, must collaborate for better urban planning. “As technology providers, we can just provide a solution but implementation lies with all the departments”.
“Everyone talks about Tier 1 cities but we have to inculcate this parking behaviour in people in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities also, so when they come to bigger cities, they know that there is dedicated parking place”, said Sharma. Technology can play a large role as it is not humanly possible to manage the huge population and traffic in cities. Parking, if not provided for in the initial design of the city, can be created underground, viz. basement parking under a public place like a garden where families come to enjoy themselves. If the State can create underground metro stations, then parking space should not be an issue, said Sharma. Using technology like a search engine to find a parking spot is also a great idea.
Another solution is getting the car to beep continuously whenever it is in non-parking zone, to alert the driver. The government should take advantage of technology in planning at a larger scale, after experimenting with pilots in smaller cities, she added.
Raturi responded on the query of data privacy saying while they do all vulnerable and penetration tests (VAPTs), nobody can guarantee that the data cannot be lost to a malicious entity. Data are stored in a way where they cannot be connected to an end user. It is encrypted and scrubbed off identifiers. The system can predict what kind of traffic they should expect in the parking lot in the next 48 hours and a number of malls use that to figure out their own footfalls but if that data if given to somebody else, it has no value because its already stripped off the identifying patterns. In case of parking, it’s a scale issue, not an individual one. “We do close to 250,000 transactions a day so we need to be very careful”, he concluded.
Sharma hoped the old city of Jaipur could be maintained as a vehicle-free zone. While appreciating Amsterdam’s cycle culture and Austria’s beautiful landscaping with parking, she recognized that every country, city and its population was different. Therefore, instead of replicating, one could learn lessons in city planning. An integrated approach was required to achieve this, she concluded.