Buildings designated for parking cars in the capital lie underused as people park their vehicles on the streets flouting traffic rules. The photo was taken at Gulshan-1 in Dhaka on Friday.
The capital’s traffic congestion has worsened further as the already inadequate parking lots are falling further short for the ever increasing number of motor vehicles, experts have said.
Rajdhani Unnayan Kartripakkha and Dhaka South City Corporation have two off-street parking spaces for about 2.29lakh registered cars in the city.
However, these off-street buildings are under-used, which rendered these projects a failure, officials have said.
Currently, there is no on-street parking space in Dhaka while the Dhaka North City Corporation at present has no off-street parking space either.
The authorities’ negligence, management failure and lack of coordination are responsible for the situation while people should be more conscious, said experts.
Rajuk in 2013 opened a 14-storey commercial building in front of the city corporation market at Gushan-1 after construction work for over a period of six years since December 2007 at a cost of Tk 39 crore.
After more than two years in October 2015, the complex’s first seven floors were opened for parking 170 cars under a contractor company – Elite Construction.
According to the company, since October last year it sold 33 parking tickets per working day.
‘We are incurring heavy losses. People tend to park cars on roads but not in the complex,’ said Elite Construction managing director Jewel Roy.
Recently, it was found that the complex’s two floors were empty while some cars were parked on the roads adjacent to the complex.
Years back, Rajuk started to construct an eight-storey building for off-street car parking facilities at Dilkusha which is now a dead project due to a High Court writ for using the building only for car parking, not for any commercial use.
Under the DSCC, the much-hyped 37-storey City Centre, an off-street multi-storey parking lot at Motijheel Commercial Area, which took eight years for construction since 2004, was opened for public last year.
For parking cars, City Centre has seven dedicated floors to give space for 500 vehicles at a time but it was not getting expected response from people, said DSCC additional chief engineer Nurul Amin.
He said the work of the under-construction off-street multi-storey building at Dilkusha had been stalled due to objection from the president’s office.
According to the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, currently in Dhaka there are a total of 9.81 lakh registered motor vehicles, with the number of registered vehicles increasing every year. A total of 54,492 vehicles were registered in 2013, 73,051 in 2014 and 95,743 in 2015.
BUET Accident Research Institute director professor Moazzem Hossain said it was a common scenario in Bangladesh to shift blame for any problem.
Traffic congestion and parking issues influence each other, so the government should recognise illegal parking as a problem, he said.
Work for Better Bangladesh, Trust programme manager Maruf Hossain said no on- or off-street parking facilities should be on busy roads.
He stressed a coordinated and overall management of the DMP, Rajuk and the city corporations to stop illegal parking.
Rajuk executive engineer (central Dhaka division) Rahat Muslemin said people were not interested to park cars at Gulshan Complex.
She said it was the responsibility of traffic police and city corporations to make people park vehicles in off-street buildings.
Rajuk chief engineer ASM Raihanul Ferdous said people were habituated to parking vehicles on roads.
The authorities should also strongly focus on making people aware about the complex, he added.
DNCC traffic engineering department superintendent engineer Arifur Rahman said they were not yet able to find any place to construct off-street parking facilities.
He said it was responsibility of Dhaka Metropolitan Police to fine vehicles for illegal parking.
Rajuk also cannot avoid its responsibility for stopping illegal parking as they allowed construction of high-rise buildings without adequate space for parking, he added.
DMP joint commissioner for traffic Mosleh Uddin Ahmed said most of the people do not know about Gulshan car parking complex due to poor campaign.
He claimed that after series of drives many owners started to park vehicles inside City Centre.
As there were a huge number of vehicles in Dhaka they allowed car parking on single line on by-lanes amid a lack of parking space, he added.
Source: New Age