MoBay gets new automated car park system

WESTERN BUREAU:

The St James Municipal Corporation (StJMC) last Thursday opened Montego Bay’s first automated car park, the first facility of its type in western Jamaica, allowing motorists who traverse the western city a location where they can park their vehicles using a modernised technological system.

Located along Harbour Street in downtown Montego Bay, the facility – whose automated system was set up by the Montego Bay based Innovative Core Solutions – allows motorists to collect a card upon entry and pay a digital parking fee when they leave, with the fees being determined by how long they use the car park. Users will be able to register for temporary cards, or for cards with a monthly fee subscription.

Montego Bay Mayor Richard Vernon, who was on hand for Thursday’s commissioning of the car park, said the initiative is in line with the StJMC’s thrust to streamline motor vehicle parking in Montego Bay and advance the city as a technological centre.

“This event underscores our greater vision for the city of Montego Bay, our urban renewal vision that we are undertaking right across the city. We are here to position Montego Bay as a tech-renewable city, and this automated car park is a small ladder for the greater vision that we have,” Vernon said during the launch.

“Ideally, we would love to have this car park as a multi-storey car park, but we are not there yet. This initiative will bring us to a stage where we can improve our revenues and bring about better order with traffic management across the city of Montego Bay, and will also feed into the greater vision of Montego Bay moving towards being a ‘smart city’,” Vernon added.

He was referencing previous calls by the StJMC for the establishment of a modern transportation centre in Montego Bay, in order to deal with chronic traffic congestion and widespread parking issues in the western city. In 2022, then Transport Minister Audley Shaw announced that Montego Bay would receive a new transportation centre, with an expected launch in 2023, but those plans did not come to fruition.

Nicholas Thompson, the operator of Innovative Core Solutions, said that further upgrades will be made to strengthen the security features for the Harbour Street car park's automated system.

“We are going to put in licence plate readers that will read the licence plates of persons who are registered in the system so, if you are registered, the licence plate reader will read your number and allow you entrance into the parking lot. I also intend to upgrade the system so that, by just looking at the barrier, it opens for you, and somebody else cannot drive your car and get in, because it is not registered to them,” said Thompson.

“The system is built with different levels of security that are hard to get around. If you come in and then pass your card over the fence to give somebody else to come in, it is going to say you are already in,” Thompson added.

The opening of the Harbour Street automated car park is the latest move to transform Montego Bay into a technologically advanced city and modernise the city’s transportation system, following last August’s breaking of ground for a smart bus stop in the Mt Salem community. That project was put in place to address the longstanding issue of satellite taxi stands across Montego Bay.

christopher.thomas@gleanerjm.com