Parking projects linked to the radio-frequency identification (RFID) system set up at 13 toll booths by the South Delhi Municipal Corporation may soon be undertaken at Lajpat Nagar, Kamla Nagar and Krishna Nagar on a pilot basis, members of the Environment Pollution Prevention & Control Authority (EPCA) said on Tuesday.
Welcoming the Supreme Court’s judgment on parking in Delhi, EPCA member Sunita Narain called it “historic”. For the first time this decision has recognised a pedestrian’s right to walk and identified that free parking is not a right, she said. The EPCA will soon develop a pilot project to tie up the RFID systems with parking, she said.
This could involve features such as identifying the amount of money a particular vehicle owes in parking charges, whether it has been paid or not. Since, vehicles parked in these areas are primarily residential, the EPCA would also explore installing similar tags on private vehicles or developing an alternative system, an SDMC official said. Based on the outcomes from these areas, expanding it to other areas will also be explored, she said.
With regard to the recently implemented RFID toll collection mechanism, senior SDMC officials said that while 3,06,812 vehicles had been pre-registerd for the tags, however, very few people had recharged their accounts.
As a consequence many vehicles with the tags were still paying in cash. The EPCA has now decided to disallow cash transactions from such vehicles. Such vehicles will now be stopped at the toll plazas.
Earlier, the SDMC had also announced that those commercial vehicles which don’t get RFID tags, would have to pay a penalty of double the amount in the first week, four times the amount in the second week and six times the amount in the fourth week. Following this, commercial vehicles without the tags will now be allowed in the city, officials had said. These penalties will continue to apply.
In order to encourage vehicle owners to recharge easily, the SDMC has launched a pre-registration website. Customers can sign up and upload their documents on to the website for pre-registration, which will then be physically verified as well as use online banking modes to recharge their accounts through www.ecctagsdmc.com as well as through a mobile app. Apart from this, 28 point of sale centers have also been made available for registration and recharge.
The project was undertaken on the directions of the Supreme Court in order to curb the entry of vehicles over 10 years old and to reduce congestion at the toll booths. It facilitates a cashless transaction of toll tax and environmental congestion charge (ECC) from commercial vehicles through automatic systems. Currently it has been deployed, through the SDMC at 13 border points from where, officials said 80% of the traffic entering Delhi passes. Ms. Narain also said that in the next phase more border points will be equipped with similar technology.