International City parking woes persist and worsening

Dubai: International City residents said they continue to bear the brunt of insufficient parking spaces in their neighbourhood, compounded by competition with rental cars and abandoned vehicles.

Residents of a building in the Russia Cluster, for example, slammed a rental company in their building for taking up too many spaces for its rental vehicles. This forces residents to park by the bend at night, risking a Dh200 fine when parking is full.

“He has 18 cars lying in the parking and every day we have to park improperly on the edge of the road and then we get fined the next day. Where will we park, on the roof?” Farah, a resident, told Gulf News.

Syrian resident Omar said he took pictures of the rental vehicles, which he claimed had been abandoned by the owner and reported them to authorities. But no action has been taken so far.

“For the past four months, that rental company has been closed. Before it closed, I knew the owner and he had about 18 to 20 cars parked behind the building,” Omar said.

“I went to Nakheel many times, I spoke to the manager of International City and every month we are getting parking fines of Dh1,000 to Dh2,000 because we have no parking space.”

Shao Ling Chen, another resident who racked up Dh400 in fines this month, said that even without the abandoned and rental cars taking up their parking, parking space in International City is insufficient in the first place.

International City is an affordable mixed-use development with over 22,000 residences and over 5,000 retail units in 387 buildings. Competition for parking space is fierce during the night for its estimated 60,000 residents.

Gulf News visited the area and residents pointed to four small rental cars that they claim have not been used for “months now”. On its windshields were traces of stick-ons of Nakheel’s official towing notices that had been removed. The cars, however, did not have any stickers nor markings that they are rental cars.

Gulf News repeatedly knocked on the rental company to speak to the owner but shopkeepers beside it said no one had been around for weeks. Gulf News contacted the published phone and mobile numbers of the company but both were not working. A request for comment via email remains unanswered.

On the other side of the building, an illegally parked vehicle had a towing notice as well for parking by the bend illegally. The notice, dated May 28, said the car would be towed in two weeks’ time if the owner did not park it properly. The abandoned car’s front tyres had burst. Two more abandoned cars had the same notice in the opposite block and in the Spain Cluster.

Colonel Jamal Al Bannai, Acting Director of Dubai Traffic Police, said residents can either call Dubai Municipality, Dubai Police, or Nakheel to report abandoned vehicles. He said police will only tow the car if it’s a wanted vehicle.

A representative from Dubai Municipality’s contact centre said residents should first inform their developer, in this case, Nakheel, and if no action is taken, only then can they request for the vehicles to be towed by municipality.

When contacted, a Nakheel spokesperson said: “We continue to explore new ways of overcoming these challenges.”

- With inputs from Noorhan Barakat, Staff Reporter