Tourists to get online parking lot booking facility in Shimla

To facilitate tourists with parking lot facilities, the Municipal Corporation (MC), Shimla, will soon turn two of its parking lots into smart parking lots. This will enable them to pre-book parking space for their vehicles in these lots via an online application.

The MC, in collaboration with Germany-based Coco Park Company, is set to offer this online booking facility in parking lots near the Lift and in Dhalli having parking capacity of around 700 and 150 vehicles, respectively. The scheme will be started in these parking lots on a pilot basis.

Dheeraj Chandel, project director, Shimla, said the civic body planned to turn two parking lots into smart parking ones and tourists would be able to book parking slots for their vehicles in advance via an application. He said the scheme was being implemented on a pilot basis through which it would be checked how successful this initiative could be. “If successful, the scheme would be implemented in every parking lot in the town,” he said.

Additionally, an LED screen would be installed at Taradevi, 8 km from the state’s capital, on which the status of the available parking spaces in the selected parking lots would be displayed. According to the Municipal Corporation officials, this would help people in knowing the total number of reserved as well as vacant parking space available in the parking lots.

At present, the MC is preparing the mobile application that would also be available for use soon.

Due to the lack of parking facilities in the town, locals as well as tourists have to face problems in finding parking space for their vehicles. Many times, people have no choice but to park their vehicles on roadsides, which leads to the congestion of roads as well as frequent traffic jams. Parking problems are at their peak during the tourist season during summers and winters.

Yellow Line parkings to be made across city

• To reduce the parking woes in the town, the MC, Shimla, is also set to mark Yellow Line parkings in all wards of the town
• This was decided at the monthly meeting of the civic body in which the councillors had said that people were parking their vehicles on roadsides
• During the meeting, Mayor, Surender Chauhan had said that a survey would soon be conducted to identify spots for Yellow Line parkings