NO SHOPPING BLUES AT SAROJINI NGR AS PARKING GETS SMART You can stop worrying about parking boys damaging your car or extorting from you The struggle to find parking space at one of the city’s busiest markets — Sarojini Nagar — may end soon. The New Delhi Municipal Council is going to make Delhi’s first and Asia’s largest multilevel automated parking lot operational by the first week of November. “We have got all the necessary approvals from various agencies. This will end the parking crisis faced by shoppers and traders as the state-ofthe-art parking lot has space for 824 cars. This is Asia’s largest parking,” said Santosh D Vaidya, secretary, NDMC. The nine-storey building will have a shopping complex on the first two floors — ground and first — and parking space on the rest. At the entry counter, the vehicle number and a photo of the number plate will be uploaded in the system and the driver will be issued a smart card. “The drive will park the vehicle in the transfer bay adjacent to the lift and swipe the smart card to complete the transfer process. The vehicle, which is placed on a pallet, will be automatically shifted to the lift and parked in the available parking slot,” said Amit Prasad, director, public relations, NDMC. For smooth functioning of this system, there are eight lifts and six transfer bays. “During peak hours, we will get a lot of requests for either parking or retrieval simultaneously. We have planned six transfer bays so that six parking requests can be simultaneously handled,” said an NDMC official. At the time of retrieval, the driver has to submit the smart card at the car retrieval counter. The system will automatically calculate the parking charges. Once the amount is paid, the system will generate a request for car retrieval. NDMC has given the parking lot on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis to a private concessionaire for 30 years. Although the parking is ready, the civic agency is yet to settle the issue of type of vehicles which can be parked here. According to sources, the private concessionaire has informed NDMC that vehicles, which don’t have company-fitted LPG and CNG kits, will not be allowed to use the parking lot due to safety reasons. “All vehicles with company-fitted LPG and CNG system will be allowed. As for other vehicles, we are discussing the issue with the private concessionaire and will soon resolve it,” said Vaidya. After the Sarojini Nagar parking, NDMC plans to make the multilevel automated parking lot at Baba Kharak Singh Marg operational by early next year. The civic agency has recently got the proposal to construct a similar parking opposite Birla Mandir on Kali Bari Marg. “The land belongs to the tourism ministry, which approved the proposal recently,” said Vaidya.