Parking places revisited…
To add to Alex’s post on building new parking garages…
This is really one example where the relationship between government action and private business is very important. While this idea of “Public Private Partnership” is spoken frequently by government officials, what it really means now and in the future is ill defined.
The problem here for investment in parking garages is one only look at all the cars on the sidewalks (and sometimes parked in the middle of streets, intersections, and other inconvenient places) to determine that the municipalities are not very serious about parking. The most effective thing for the government to do to stimulate investment is to set a future date of say… January 1, 2009… where all parking laws will be vigourously enforced, owners fined, cars towed, etc. without exception. This will provide incentive for private investors to build garages as they can be assured they will have customers.
Given the scarcity of land in Bucharest…. builders who specialize in underground and multi-story lots will have an advantage.
Concerns about raising parking expenses for low-income residents can be assuaged by offering vouchers to persons below a certain income level.
Written by Steve
April 9th, 2007 at 10:27 am
[...] Alex and I posted on opportunities for building parking garages in Bucharest and Romania given the huge shortages of spots needed to satisfy demand. The success of our ideas required action on the part of those with the power to enforce parking laws. Here is another reason for the municipal authorities to get serious with parking if they ever hope to make Bucharest a tourist destination… I was driving through central Bucharest yesterday and…due to the Easter holiday… there were far fewer cars parked on the sidewalks and other illegal spots. It was amazing how much better the city looked. Although cars are, of course, parked at street level (I have seen a car half-parked in a large pothole but not yet in a tree), the missing cars made the architecture of the buildings stand out in a very nice way. [...]