All parking lots in New Town will be equipped with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) readers that will enable vehicle owners to pay the parking fees in a contact-less way.

The New Town authorities want to start the system “as soon as possible” to eliminate issuing of paper slips as well as exchange of currency notes and coins as a precaution against Covid-19, an official of the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) said on Sunday.

The NKDA has earmarked several parking lots, including the one near Tata Medical Center and the ones adjacent to Eco Park, where a pilot run of the project will be conducted.

Senior NKDA officials held a videoconference with officials of the National Payment Corporation of India to discuss ways to implement the system that will involve pasting RFID stickers on vehicles. Mechanical readers in the parking lots will read the stickers and money will be deducted from bank accounts of vehicle owners.

An official said they were planning to adopt the FASTag-RFID infrastructure used to collect payments at toll gates on highways. The tags pasted on vehicle windscreens enable motorists to drive through toll plazas, without stopping to pay the tax. The amount is automatically deducted from the owner’s account.

“FASTag is vehicle-specific. Once it is affixed on a vehicle, it cannot be transferred to another vehicle,” an NKDA official said.

A mobile app will be launched that will guide vehicles towards empty parking spots near the destinations, which will have to be uploaded on the app, officials said.

Pins in green and red will denote availability or otherwise of parking lots in a particular area. A detailed list of the number of spots available for four-wheelers and two-wheelers will also be displayed as soon as the destination is keyed in.

The app will also give an option of booking a parking spot. A timer will start as soon as a vehicle is parked in the designated spot and will stop when the vehicle leaves. The amount will be debited from the owner’s account.

“The system will help us fight Covid-19 by eliminating the need for human-to-human contact. Besides, the app and the system will leave no scope for manual intervention in terms of timing and the hourly rates. Nobody will be able to tamper with it and charge extra from vehicle owners,” said NKDA chairman Debashis Sen.

The Telegraph has reported that the Nabadiganta Industrial Township Authority (NDITA), which looks after the civic amenities in Sector V, was planning to launch a contactless system for payment of parking fees.

Parking rackets thrive in New Town and Sector V with attendants charging anything between Rs 50 and Rs 200 an hour.

The rates fixed by the NDITA are Rs 10 an hour for four-wheelers and Rs 5 an hour for two-wheelers. In New Town, it varies from one parking lot to another.