Dubai: Double parking continues to be rampant in Dubai’s commercial areas and residents say this causes massive delays.
Just like it is a problem in most cosmopolitan cities, double parking slows down the traffic flow, especially during rush hour and weekends, Dubai motorists said.
Residents Gulf News spoke to said this occurs in the same places most of the time, especially in busy commercial areas in old Dubai where people get takeaways, groceries, make deliveries. Other places in new Dubai are getting busier as well.
Naif and other areas in Deira top the list of the places where double parking is common, motorists said. Baniyas Square, Al Fahidi, Meena Bazaar, Al Karama, Jumeirah, Al Barsha, Al Quoz, Al Ghusais, even the service roads on Shaikh Zayed Road near the Trade Centre Roundabout are other problem areas.
During a random drive around these busy areas, Gulf News noted that the primary reason for double parking is the limited number of parking spaces in some areas. But even in areas where there were parking spaces just one or two metres away, some people couldn’t be bothered to walk a short distance and still chose to double-park.
“I used to live in Naif and the parking problem was one of the reasons why I moved. I had been late to meetings on many occasions because someone decided to block my parking while buying something from a shop in the area,” Jonathan Campos, 37, a Filipino sales supervisor, told Gulf News.
“I called police maybe around six to 10 times to clear the traffic because most roads there are one-way. There’s no room to overtake a vehicle that’s double-parked,” he added.
In 2014, Dubai Police issued 168,107 fines to people who double parked on the road that disrupted traffic flow while 172,851 fines were issued for parking in prohibited areas. Each fine is Dh200.
Rajkumar Pancholia, an Indian businessman whose office is located near Dubai Museum, said double parking is so common in the area that it causes unnecessary traffic jams.
“Sometimes it causes me delays for about 10 to 20 minutes. We wait for the person to come back so the people behind me get stuck as well,” Pancholia said.
Filipino credit controller Diane de Lara, 31, said waiting for less than a minute once in a while is fine, but not if it’s a habit for many.
“If you compute the one or two minutes they make you wait on a busy road every single day because they’re getting their takeaways in a non-designated area, that would be a lot. In most cases, it’s as if the shop has already extended its service area to the road. They don’t even care about oncoming traffic any more,” de Lara said.
According to a study published in the Journal of Transportation Research Board in 2013, limiting double parking could result in a decrease of about 15 per cent and 20 per cent in delay (due to slow traffic flow) and stopped time (when one cannot move forward as one’s way is blocked), respectively. However, if double parking is eliminated, delay and stopped time can decrease by up to 33 per cent and 47 per cent, respectively.
Continued increased police visibility and taking the Dubai Metro help solve the problem, residents said, but exercising self-discipline is the key. But for Palestinian expatriate Mohammad Shaath adding more parking spaces is the answer.
