SINGAPORE - Motorists looking for Housing Board carpark lots may soon have more ways to do so, as the HDB has made real-time information more available.

Since July, the Mobile@HDB smartphone application has offered real-time information about available short-term lots in HDB carparks with the Electronic Parking System. This is alongside a service that lets drivers find car parks within 400m of their current location.

Since Monday, this information has also been made available to the public via the data.gov.sg website.

This will also help private system developers who want to incorporate the data into their applications, the HDB said in a statement on Thursday.

The application's usefulness will grow as the Electronic Parking System is rolled out further, with half of all HDB carparks to be automated by the first half of 2015.

Electronic parking was first implemented in HDB car parks in 2004, and is now in place for about 610 out of the 1,800 existing ones. By the first half of 2015, another 300 car parks will have the system, which is operated through electronic gantries.

The system "will be installed progressively at all car parks, where there are no site constraints, over the next few years," the HDB added.

An enhanced version of electronic parking is also being rolled out. Under the old system, a fixed number of lots were open to visitors and the rest reserved for season parking ticket holders. However the HDB said this did not allow optimal use of the lots.

The enhanced version has more visitor lots available during non-peak hours, when season parking ticket holders are away, and fewer visitor lots in the evening, to ensure enough lots are reserved for season parking ticket holders returning home.

So far, 440 car parks in Toa Payoh Central, Bukit Batok Central and Bedok Central are using the enhanced version. The rest will also be upgraded over time.