Soon, pay parking fee with mobile app, SMS

Chennai: There is good news for those who are worried about picking up arguments with parking lot personnel for a parking receipt or getting their balance money. The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) and Chennai City Corporation are working to implement IT based parking system in which a motorist can pay parking fee through a mobile application or by sending an SMS.

In the initial phase, the city corporation is likely to implement the system in key destinations including Broadway, Purasawalkam, Mylapore, T.Nagar, Adyar, and Besant Nagar. Speaking to Deccan Chronicle on Friday, Christopher Kost, technical director at ITDP said that collection of parking fee in Chennai was done manually, which puts the motorist and the parking agent into trouble as both of them spend more time in the process.

The manual system also does not provide any opportunity to track either the vehicle or the availability of space in the parking lot. “The city corporation wants to do away with the cash collection system for parking, for which we are working with them to implement IT based parking system in which payments are tied to a vehicle's license plate number, which is in turn integrated to the user's cell phone number.

The corporation has started its survey to identify the areas where it can implement the system, which is expected to be over by four months," he said. A regular user will have the option of signing up for a user account connected to a registered vehicle and mobile number that could be used for parking fee payment anywhere in the city. The user will use an SMS or smartphone application to notify the parking system that he has begun parking in a paid parking lot.