manoj

Say goodbye to pesky parking attendants and contractors out to make a fast buck. Metered parking for four-wheelers is here to stay. The BBMP will soon introduce a payand-park scheme on 30 city roads and it’ll will be announced in its budget on Friday.

After the success of metered parking introduced on Brigade Road and Commercial Street, the civic authorities held meetings with the traffic police and decided to introduce it for four-wheelers on roads in commercial areas. Two-wheelers are not part of this scheme. These roads include M G Road, Church Street, Residency Road, St Mark’s Road and Cunningham Road in the central business district and some major roads in Indiranagar, Malleswaram, and Jayanagar.

The scheme was opposed and scrapped in 2005 after much debate and deliberation as vehicle owners faced harassment from parking attendant during the tenure of former Mayor R Narayanaswamy.

This time around, the authorities want to ensure that the vehicle owners are spared from the same grind and are bringing in metered parking.

The authorities will collect Rs 20 per hour for four-wheelers and thereafter the vehicle users have to take fresh coupons from the automated parking meters, failing which the vehicles will be towed to the jurisdictional police station.

Scrapping of the pay-and-park scheme by the BBMP was celebrated by Bangaloreans. The then BMP would mop up Rs 6 crore annually from parking contractors. The first-ever automated car parking was introduced on Brigade Road by the Brigade’s Shop and Establishments Association. Ten machines were installed at a cost of around Rs 50 lakh on a BOT basis.

Another highlight of the budget is the floating of municipal bonds for creation of infrastructure. The municipal bonds will be tax-free, as announced in the Union budget. The funds raised will be invested in building roads, water supply and drainage facilities. This is the second time that the civic body is floating bonds. In 1998, bonds were floated to raise Rs 100 crore which was over-subscribed and fetched Rs 125 crore. This was invested in roads works. This time around, the BBMP’s bond venture will be on a larger scale.

Source: http://epaper.timesofindia.com (Bangalore Edition)
Date Of Publish: 29-Mar-07

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