BANGALORE: Shraddha drives down on weekends to a mall with her friends to watch a movie. She has her tickets booked for a 7 pm show. The incessant rush on weekends to go to the mall coupled with a cavalcade of cars to cross — is a daunting task. Parking in the malls on a weekend — a difficult feat to achieve — hence she looks elsewhere to park. But with no luck she has to drive a distance until she finds a place to somehow squeeze in her car -- then walk back — finally she finds out that the movie has started. So why go through this process when you can find out the parking status at the click of your mouse? As a part of their initiative to make things simple for the citizens, the traffic police have incorporated a parking info system on their website which gives information on the parking status in malls, hospitals and similar areas with computerised parking areas. Started over a year ago, it’s still in its nascent stage with only three places registered — Lido Mall, Garuda Mall and Apollo Hospital — the initiative if successful will be incorporated into an SMS service in the near future. What else? The commuter can either message to find out about the parking in the mall he is visiting and avoid the drive — if there is a parking space constraint — or visit the website to check the same.WorkingIt’s simple. You log onto www.bangaloretrafficpolice.gov.in and scroll down to see a ticker which explains the current scenario of the parking space available in the three listed areas. The mechanism to this is via a third party server which monitors the computerised parking system for the listed places. For example, each time you swipe your parking card at the parking lot in the mall — your vehicle is registered and the count of the vehicles is similarly monitored -- number of vehicles parked against the ones empty and the ones vacating. This number is then integrated by the central (third) server. The traffic police website further posts this on their website and you can see the available parking space and accordingly choose the mall.PurposeSays additional traffic commissioner, Praveen Sood, “On a weekend you want to go shop at the mall — on reaching you realise there’s no place to park. So instead it’s better to have a platform where you can find out the current status of parking and accordingly choose the place to go. For instance if you choose Garuda Mall, you can check on the website whether there is parking available or not. If not then maybe you can skip that trip and drive down to some other mall. That would make things simple.”Status todaySince the parking info system is at its nascent stage with only three places registered so far, the mechanism is not popular. One of the main glitches of the system is that there are very few computerised parking spaces in the city. “This will be a success only if there are computerised parking lots in the city.Without that it is very difficult to keep a tab on the parking space availability.Currently they are insufficient in number. Further agencies, malls and other places will have to connect us and be willing to integrate with us and take things forward,” explains Sood.So far the website gets around 900 visits per day and about 21,000 visits per month.Future plansWithin the next 20 days the website will update itself with four more places — Traffic and Transit Management Centre Whitefield, Domlur, Kengeri and Yeshwanthpur.“In the next year if there are more computerised parking lots, integrating them will also be on the agenda.If I get over 30 places who are ready to join us, a convenient solution would be to start an SMS service. People could then send a message to a common number asking their queries and would get an instant update. But right now if we popularise the existing forum it will only be a disappointment to the people, since it has only three places and the other four which are going to added soon,” adds Sood.
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