I'm fed up with having to spend half an hour or more driving around the immediate vicinity of where I live, trying to find a parking place.
I'm not talking about this happening at some unearthly hour, like one or two in the morning, when it is expected to have problems in finding somewhere to park.
No, I'm talking about any time after six in the evening; then, most of the free on-street parking spaces will have been taken by pick-up trucks and larger, buses from construction companies and schools and other commercial vehicles, as well as many hundreds of residents' cars.
The commercial vehicles usually take up two or three designated parking spaces, the outlined area being only for an average size car, which seems a fact oblivious to the drivers of said trucks and buses.
There are medium-sized free car parks in the area, but again these are mainly taken over by commercial vehicles, some drivers of which seem to look upon the space as an ideal place to load and unload their trucks, or swap loads with another driver.
I live in Bur Dubai, and have done so for nearly 20 years. The residential area has expanded enormously in that time, but the provision of additional parking spaces for residents has not kept pace.
Not only is the area I live in subject to the nightly merry-go-round of residents trying to find a place to park, but also the same applies to areas such as Karama, perhaps the largest medium-cost residential area in Dubai, the Golden/Silver Sands complexes, Al Ghusais, Al Sha'ab … the list goes on, but I will not.
Many years ago, Dubai Municipality issued an instruction to building owners, architects and builders stating that any old building demolished to make way for a new residential building must have parking spaces provided on the ground floor, adequate for all tenants.
A good idea, you might think. Yet many of the new buildings are so badly designed that about the only car that will comfortably ingress or egress the parking area is a Smart car.
Any reasonable size saloon car will have a tough time getting in and out, thus drivers park on the street instead, if possible, to make their life easier, thereby restricting these areas even more, especially for those residents (like me) who do not have a ground floor parking facility.
What I find particularly disturbing is that any night, a drive around the areas I have mentioned will reveal that there are several hundred yes hundred, I kid you not private cars parked on the pavements.
The reason for this being there is no alternative if you want to park your car within a reasonable distance of your home. (I don't mean immediately outside your front door, that would be too much to expect, but within 5 minutes walk would be nice.)
So, all the errant drivers of these vehicles parked on pavements and similarly illegal places take a risk that next morning they will wake up to see a fine for obstruction has been placed under their windscreen-wiper, courtesy of Dubai Police.
Yet it is a gamble residents are prepared to take as they have no alternative. However, it is unfair for two reasons.
One, there is no consistency in the issuance of fines to errant drivers. You may be lucky and get away without being issued a ticket for some time, and then find you get a two tickets a couple of days apart.
And two, I (and I am sure many others) resent being fined when there is no adequate alternative provided. It is as if Dubai Municipality and Dubai Police are colluding to maximise inconvenience and infer that we drivers are idiots in deliberately flouting the law.
But this collusion is not the way to solve the parking problems of Dubai or any other emirate that may suffer similarly.
There are solutions, of course, but I do wonder if they interest either authority. For example, in the now highly congested residential areas, instead of having open space free parking at ground level, multi-storey car parks could be built.
If necessary, local residents could be charged a fee for allocated parking within the block the same residents who suffer daily will surely not object to a nominal charge for the security of knowing a safe place is provided for their vehicle.
As for commercial vehicles, these should be completely banned from parking in residential areas; but, if that is too Draconian, then some of the existing ground parking areas could be set aside exclusively for these larger vehicles.
For every problem, there is an answer. So instead of it being another fine mess for the public to face, there could be another fine solution.
Gulf News
