Dubai: The lack of parking spaces in many Dubai communities has become one of the most common frustrations residents are forced to deal with on a daily basis. The Remraam community is no exception.
A new parking system has recently been put in place in the Remraam community, requiring residents to place a parking tag on their car’s windshield. The tag is automatically scanned at the gated parking lot for the barriers to open.
While the new system ensures that allocated parking spaces are secured, residents with a second or third car are still struggling to find parking in the area.
“The new system is very good because it allows only the cars with tags to come in. Before that, we had to swipe a card for the barriers to open and at times the barriers wouldn’t work and were always open to everyone in the community,” said Egyptian Mustafa Rafaat, a resident.
However, with very few additional parking spots available under each building, hundreds of cars are wrongly parked on the side roads and in empty sand lots outside the community.
Studios, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments in Remraam are allocated one parking spot each, while three-bedroom apartments are given two parking spots. “This has made it very hard for people with a second car to find parking, and many end up parking in the grass area or on the pavement,” said Rafaat who lives in a two-bedroom apartment.
Lebanese resident Sarah H. said while she supports the new parking system, her husband struggles to find parking every evening when coming home from work. “The new system keeps intruders out from parking in our allocated spaces, but parking outside the buildings is just chaos,” she said.
However, Abdullah Abu Shabeib, senior executive director, Customer Care and Government Relations at Dubai Properties (DP), told Gulf News they are currently in the process of carrying out a routine upgrade to the parking system at the Remraam community to enhance the living standards for residents.
“The close-proximity card-reader system is being replaced with RFID (radio-frequency identification) access tags, which we are urging tenants to place in the windshield of their vehicles for easy identification. The systems upgrade is being carried out across the community in a phased manner,” he added. Dubai Properties did not give a comment on creating additional parking spaces in the community.
