Dear Editor,
In relation to City Hall’s Parking Meter Project (PMP), I would first ask the question whether there is traffic congestion in the city centre, and what the possible solutions are.
Traffic congestion is primarily determined by the time delay which is incurred in moving from point A to point B. Some measure this time as being as much as sixty minutes for persons to get to and from work within a radius of five miles. I would say that for the PMP the radius is half a mile and the normal time to traverse this area by vehicle should be fifteen minutes. I have logged commute time in all these areas and a person can move from Hadfield Street to Church Street on Avenue of the Republic in under that time in the busiest of periods. From Church Street to Hadfield Street via Camp is less than that. Travel between Cummings Street and Water Street via Croal Street, South Road, Regent Street, Robb Street, North Road or Church Street are all also under fifteen minutes. Thus I concluded that the congestion we are trying to cure with the PMP is not bad (at this time).
To increase traffic flow, all road users need to obey traffic rules. In the downtown areas the biggest obstacle to flow is the manner in which pedestrians cross the road. There should be wardens placed at key crossings to regulate pedestrian crossings. This should be paid out of the taxes which are paid to City Hall. The downtown businesses and property owners pay more than their fair share of taxes to City Hall and receive the least amount of services.
Secondly, is the project intended to assist with the issue of parking?
Along certain arteries the wait for a parking spot is under ten minutes. Most of the parking in the PMP area is taken up by store owners and their employees or the roadside vending. However, we have not met levels that demand critical action. When the police started the current no diagonal parking along main downtown streets, there was outrage about the decrease in parking. However, apart from circling a few times there is parking. Those who want to drive downtown are already consolidating trips to the city or are taking taxis.
If we want the private sector to do parking as a business then we should not put parking meters, but allow the issue of demand and supply to allocate the investments necessary. The Parika private parking lot is a great local example of this. The example of how not to do it is the City Hall’s reactive parking lot on East Street.
Is the PMP a good revenue earning measure?
City Hall has to deal with the perennial problem that all local government authorities have to deal with, ie, financing budgets. We are told that the city will get twenty per cent of the revenues or about $200 million. The parking meter guru recently said that central government will get sixteen per cent also – I guess he is talking about the VAT on the parking meter charges. That sixteen per cent is not to be taken into the revenue equation. Thus it means that City Hall is delegating revenue collection to a private company and willing to incur four times the revenue in collection cost for that revenue. This must be the most inefficient tax collecting system ever. Imagine GRA spending $800 billion to collect $200 billion. City Hall says two hundred jobs will be created; this is not job creation, it’s the cost of inefficiency. As a revenue programme the PMP cannot stand the test. In addition, the new local government laws talk about fiscal transfers; let’s wait on that.
One would have expected that an outgoing council (Nov 2015) would not have entered into any major contractual arrangements when they knew local government elections were around the corner. What really was their motive?
A new council would have looked at the operations of City Hall and worked on improving efficiencies at all levels. I am sure that if they had done a review and a forensic audit we would have learnt much. Will they do it?
It’s a fact that when Ms Carol Sooba left office City Hall had $750 million in its account. Now it is that amount in debt. How come, I ask?
Yours faithfully,
Manzoor Nadir
