Parking Meters – Revenues for Georgetown

Sep 17, 2008 Features / Columnists

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Peter R. Ramsaroop, MBA

INTRODUCTION
The Mayor of Georgetown advocated aggressively for new revenue in order to improve the city. The fact that the Government does not pay its share of taxes to the city on time and holds the city hostage is sinister.

Withholding our taxpaying dollars from the city and other institutions such as Critchlow Labour College is a blatant disregard for the well-being of the citizens.

The need to invest in new technologies in order to improve public service efficiency and increase revenue is needed.

There are a few systems that are standard in the developed world that would fit practical improvements, if implemented in Guyana.

I will touch on one such system below and will address the other “License Office Technology” in Friday’s Economic Corner.

PARKING METERS
I was elated last year when I heard Deputy Mayor Robert Williams announce that they were introducing a parking meter system in Georgetown.

With the influx of so many vehicles in the 1990s to present, if not parking meters, they could have instituted some formal parking system.

As it is today, vehicles are parked where their owners feel like parking them and there are few legal parameters as to how people should park.

With a parking meter system and legal parameters of how we in the city should park, we can address a few issues: Regular congestion, parking-induced congestion (Congestion due to an ill-equipped parking system) that allows cars to over congregate in the main commercial areas resulting in crowding and stagnation on city streets, pollution; with the ever increasing flow of traffic into Georgetown, deleterious effects have resulted from the CO2 emissions from trucking, minibuses, taxis and private cars.

With this system the society can be encouraged to get back to the bicycle revolution like what is taking place in NYC and around the world. We can create safe zones and secure zones for people riding into the city to park or lock their bicycles.

COST
The implementation of such a system would require some form of technology (organization of knowledge, people and things to accomplish practical goals) It would also require some major investment in equipment and with the council strapped for money, the Government will need to pay up its taxes in order for the city to accomplish this goal.

Many would support such a plan for a structured parking system and some parking meters within the city. It is something we need.

With the upfront outlay of money to implement the system, it will definitely pay for itself over the years. There are two types of technology that the city can use to accommodate this.

1) Park and Display systems are used in many countries. This technology is simple, and instead of having one meter for every car, they can have one meter to cover a wide area.

Motorists will then pay at a station bay (Pay and Display Meters), receive a receipt and display this receipt inside the front windscreen of their vehicles and go ahead and park within the area marked as a pay to park.

One of these meters cost US$8,000 – US$10,000 and with a few sprinkled around Georgetown it would be good enough to collect revenue to justify its existence.

2) The second technology is what they call park by phone. This is an easy and far cheaper to operate technology. This technology will allow drivers to pay for their parking via their mobile phones.

They can either have it engineered here locally by GT&T and Digicel or let a developer/third party carry out the task.

If we have the local phone companies engineer the system, they will be paid from a percentage of the parking fees that are collected via their systems.

If we start by using ten of these meters (US$100,000), park by phone system (US$65,000) and a good citation/ticket writing system($90,000US) a total investment in equipment of US$255,000.

I know that there are enough car parks within this city, using the systems everyday, to have revenues totaling that and over within two years.

CONCLUSION
This is a basic automated system that should be fully supported and will be useful for a developing society like Guyana.

As usual, we tend to take a very long time to implement any proposed plans. I believe the city already has a proposal on the parking meter system ready to go.

With all the noise from the council that they are strapped for cash, I would think that they would vigorously seek to implement this project.

They will be able to raise some funds and get some credit for bringing some form of order to the city that is desperately needed.

This system will employ many young people, broaden the technological scope of Guyana and provide a much needed infrastructure that can be built upon and improved for the overall betterment of society.

Send responses to [email protected]

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