City mulls end to on-street parking

Damar Harsanto, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The city administration will scrap on-street parking and start construction of off-street parking buildings as an effort to overcome traffic congestion in business areas.

"We'll start to ban on-street parking next year. In the future, we will provide off-street parking services so most roads can be used for traffic," City Parking Management head, Yani Mulyadi, told reporters at City Hall on Friday.

"The construction of parking buildings will be integrated to the city public transportation master plan, including the busway and monorail. The City Assets Office will help us find the perfect locations for the parking buildings."

Private companies were also invited to take part in the plan to operate off-street parking, he added.

Yani promised that the administration would give incentive for willing investors. However, he did not give details.

To date, there are 517 locations for on-street parking registered by the management. In contrast, there are two parking buildings in Pasar Baru, Central Jakarta, and Glodok, West Jakarta.

The Pasar Baru parking building can accommodate 100 vehicles, while the seven-story Glodok parking building has only two-and-a- half stories available for 135 parking spaces.

"We also plan to demolish the existing parking buildings and build new ones to increase parking spaces," said the management's deputy head Mudakir.

He added that the management garnered an annual revenue of Rp 15.5 billion (US$1.70 million), both from off-street and on- street parking schemes.

The administration once planned to convert the former site of South Jakarta municipality administration building into a parking station to cater to motorists using the busway.

Late last year, the administration terminated a contract on- street parking operation with PT Adiwira Sembada because the latter failed to improve services and increase its revenue for the administration.

The company had tried to apply a prepaid card system in several locations as a pilot project, but it failed since most customers refused to purchase prepaid cards. They claimed that the card was more expensive than if they pay cash.

Critics have repeatedly blamed the parking management for its failure to regulate the parking system in the city amid its low contribution to the annual city budget.