Self-ticketing at automated parking meters in Colombo

Text and Pic by Ashraff. A. Samad

For the first time in Sri Lanka, the Colombo Municipal Council is in the process of introducing parking meters to the city of Colombo. 

The project has already been formulated as a Private Partnership Project (PPP) and a private operator was selected through a competitive bidding process where the selection of the successful bidder was based on their experiences and capabilities on modern parking management systems and highest revenue to the Council. The winner of the competitive bidding process was Tenaga Car Park Ltd., with its technical partnership with Dialog Telecom and Gtechnca. The council awarded the management and operation to Tenaga Car Parks yesterday.  Colombo Mayor A.J.M. Muzammil and Tenaga Car Park Traffic and Parking Consultant Duminda Jaytilake signed the agreement.

Address the media briefing, Muzammil said: “As a leading council in the country, Colombo Municipal Council has been in the forefront of introducing new technologies to the city and this is a one such occasion.”

The project includes installation of about 140 units of parking meters along the entire Galle Road, R.A. de Mel Mawatha and all by-roads connecting to these roads. The project is scheduled to commence on 1 January 2016 and it will take six months to complete installation of parking meters. Until such time the parking fee will be collected manually by the traffic wardens employed by the operator. When the new system with parking meters is in operation, the motorist can pay parking charges by cash, Dialog touch card or through mobile apps specially developed for parking payments. 

At present, the parking fee collection in the city is being done manually by traffic wardens of the council and by the private operators selected through the competitive bidding process. However, several issues have been observed today in the manual operation. As a solution, the council has taken action to introduce these new technologies to parking management operation while enhancing services to the motorists in the city. 

This will benefit the public and business community as there will be availability of parking as long-term parking is discouraged by this new system due to the high parking fee for long-term use. Many other facilities such as Dialog touch card top up and Dialog mobile reload through machine, payments of parking though machine and payments of parking through mobile will facilitate the public in a great way.

  The council is also in the process of improving the existing legal framework to apprehend non-payers of parking fees and it will be enacted with the implementation of this project.