The Hindu            17.06.2013

Get ready to pay again

You’ve heard it before: very soon, you may have to pay for parking your vehicles on the city roads. In a bid to push the use of public transport and solve the knotty parking problem, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) will reintroduce the pay and park system, officially scrapped way back in 2005.

The BBMP council had approved the new parking policy in March 2012 and sent it to the government for approval.

It is understood the government gave its green signal to the policy earlier this year.

The norms

Under the new policy, the BBMP will fix the parking fees after taking into consideration the land value, the parking system to be put in place (whether mechanised or manual) and the hours.

The guidelines and byelaws are now being framed by the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT). According to a senior BBMP official, the directorate is now working on the Parking Regulation and Management Plan, which will make it easy for the BBMP to put in place.

Core areas first

The plan is being framed first for the core city areas i.e., the erstwhile Bangalore Mahanagara Palike area. The official said DULT had already completed framing the plan for Shivajinagar Assembly constituency and submitted it to the BBMP. “The plan for the other core areas will be submitted to the BBMP shortly,” he said.