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National Day Rally 2017: Street parking app to be launched by October

A carpark in Singapore. (Yahoo file photo)
A carpark in Singapore. (Yahoo file photo)

An app letting people pay for street parking in Singapore will be launched by October this year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Sunday (20 August) during his National Day Rally speech.

He explained that the app called parking.sg would enable motorists to pay only for how long they park, allow them to receive alerts when sessions are about to end and to extend their sessions.

“We will launch parking.sg by October, and it will save motorists unnecessary parking hassles,” he said, noting that motorists are still tearing parking coupons.

Parking coupons, introduced in 1980, are reportedly in use at around 1,150 carparks in Singapore.

In May this year, the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), the Housing Development Board (HDB) and the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) announced work on the development of the parking app. They said it would be “a transition step” before the move to the next-generation electronic road pricing (ERP) system, which is expected to be launched in 2020.

Currently on trial, the app determines on a per minute basis what a motorist should pay based on the carpark chosen and projected parking duration.

The parking.sg app is one of the smaller projects “to solve daily problems” that the government is working on as part of its Smart Nation program, the prime minister said in his speech.

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