Soon, book your parking space in Mumbai through this mobile app

The parking charges can be paid online and citizens will just have to show the e-invoice at the parking lot to get the space reserved for them

You can book online parking slots at seven parking lots in south Mumbai, including the one at Eros Cinema, Crawford Market, Flora Fountain and four others, by the end of the year.

The mobile app will allow users to book spots in parking lots, such as this one in Kala Ghoda, in advance for up to one hour(HT File)

To make finding parking spaces hassle-free and weed out corruption, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) started to develop a mobile phone app, similar to the railway ticket-booking app. The civic body invited expressions of interest (EOI) recently for companies to develop the app.

The app will help you look for available parking slots at any time and allow you to book them in advance for an hour or more.

The parking charges can be paid online and citizens will just have to show the e-invoice at the parking lot to get the space reserved for them. Internationally, London, among other major cities, has a similar app.

“The project got in-principle approval from civic chief Ajoy Mehta recently,” said a civic official.

Earlier this year, Larsen and Toubro approached the civic body to develop the application and take the parking system online. However, to keep the tendering process fair and competitive, BMC will invite EOI.

Transport experts have welcomed the civic body’s approach. “The plan needs to be holistic. BMC needs to map all parking lots in south Mumbai, only after which will this mobile application be successful,” said AV Shenoy, transport expert, Mumbai Vikas Samiti.

The civic body had mooted the idea of a web-based parking system in 2013, but the project didn’t take off.

Under the new parking policy, BMC divided the city into three zones based on density of traffic and hiked rates differentially in each zone up to 300%. Parking rates in the city are in the range of ₹20 and ₹60 for an hour.